


The Ballad of Dandelion and the White Wolf

by The_Watchers_Crown



Series: a star to guide thy way [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Dandelion is a star and nobody's sure what that means, Geralt's wish, Idiots in Love, M/M, Porn with Feelings, The Grumpy One is Soft For the Sunshine One, slice of (fairy tale) life, turns out I have an E.E. Cummings obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-02-24 23:28:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 67,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22326214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Watchers_Crown/pseuds/The_Watchers_Crown
Summary: The girl rolls her eyes at him. “If you’re just going to stand here ogling the witcher, maybe go and do it out of the way.”“Ogling.” Jaskier scoffs. “Who’s ogling?”She looks unimpressed. “Have youtoldhim you want him to fuck you?”(A love song.)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: a star to guide thy way [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2044150
Comments: 571
Kudos: 4450
Collections: The Witcher Alternate Universes





	1. front row praises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based primarily on show canon, but plays it fast and loose with lore and additional ingredients from both games and books.

_Death,Thee i call rich beyond wishing,_  
_if this thou catch,_  
_else missing._  
_(though love be a day,_  
_and life be nothing,it shall not stop kissing.)_

E.E. Cummings

The Three Little Bells is alive and noisy tonight, and rightfully so. The beast—damned if Jaskier remembers what the thing was called, never mind Geralt told him half a dozen times before cantering away on the animal he’s currently calling Roach—is dead and the people of Oxenfurt won’t need to worry for their daughters when the full moon rises tomorrow evening. Let them be merry.

Jaskier should be thoroughly partaking, but his heart’s not in it. His eyes stray, not for the first time, to Geralt, and his fingers fall still on his lute. Geralt is surrounded by a crowd eager to hear how he slew the _whatever it was_ ; Jaskier doubts they’re being rewarded with more than grunts. It’s _his_ job to sing the thing into another ballad for his White Wolf.

Something hard and unpleasant drops like a pit into his stomach. Those pesky misused possessives. Geralt’s never particularly been anybody’s, as far as Jaskier knows. Certainly not his.

He hasn’t looked away from the witcher yet, and Geralt doesn’t seem to have noticed. Probably for the best, that.

Geralt is cleaned up now, but Jaskier keeps seeing him the way he looked earlier: draped over a snorting and stamping Roach’s back, a veritable waterfall of blood down his arm, the leather of his armor torn open at the back, raked apart by savage claws. Could be good in a song, he thinks, or tries to think; that he might be ill is a proper thought. It’s nonsense, isn’t it? He’s seen Geralt bloody before and he’ll see Geralt bloody again and it should be easy as anything for him to shrug it off, strum it into something epic, but there had been so _much_ blood. Even Shani had gone pale and clipped as she directed his medical attention. Jaskier had been left to worry holes in the floor with his pacing.

And now Geralt looks _fine_.

Well. He’s favoring one leg and winces every time he shifts his arm a certain way, but that’s fine, for him. There’s nothing for Jaskier to be worrying over. Knowing it hasn’t stopped him so far.

“Oi,” someone says, knocking his shoulder. Jaskier blinks and forces his eyes off of Geralt; it’s an Oxenfurt student, a girl with dark skin and tight braids whose name dances away from him like the ladies spinning round the floor.

“Sorry?” he says.

The girl rolls her eyes at him and makes a broad gesture. “It’s a good night, yeah? If you’re just going to stand here ogling the witcher, maybe go and do it out of the way.”

“Ogling.” Jaskier scoffs. “Who’s ogling.”

She looks unimpressed. “Have you _told_ him you want him to fuck you?”

“Have I _what_?” Jaskier throws an alarmed look around, as though Geralt might have heard that, over everything else. It’s not an _entirely_ irrational thought, knowing Geralt’s unnatural senses.

“That’s a no, then,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “Go on, why don’t you.”

“Because I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jaskier says; it almost sounds true, but doesn’t quite feel it.

“Sure.” The girl smiles at him like he’s a child. “I don’t actually care, you know, but you _are_ in the way.”

Jaskier gives up the argument. He’s not invested in entertaining tonight, anyway, and what’s he going to do, stand here and try to convince some university girl he doesn’t want—he bats the thought away, gives her an unnecessary bow, and weaves through the crowds toward Geralt.

The seats nearest the witcher are occupied, and Jaskier can’t help a combination of warm-running pride (it’s down to him that they like Geralt, at least in part) and prickly jealousy (they’re between him and the witcher). There’s a lovely woman with golden ringlets leaning toward Geralt, her lips near to his ear, and there’s not any reason Jaskier should care if the witcher finds his way upstairs with whomever he likes, but he finds that he does.

_Have you told him you want him to fuck you?_

But that _isn_ _’t_ what he wants.

Jaskier doesn’t try to cut in, just stands there until Geralt’s eyes find him in the crowd. His expression doesn’t shift, but his mouth moves, and the woman looks put-out, tossing her hair as she vacates the barstool.

“Well?” Geralt says when Jaskier doesn’t move, indicating the seat. “You think I made her move for a laugh?”

“Never know with you, you could just be an ass,” Jaskier says, but takes the seat, tucking his lute safely beside him.

“Hm.” Geralt takes a swig of whatever’s in his hand before nodding toward where the dark-haired student is drumming a beat and singing, another man having joined her with a tambourine. “Aren’t you supposed to be over there singing my praises?”

“They’re doing a fine job of it without me.” It comes out as more of a grumble than he means, and conscious of the fact that he sounds unlike himself, he adds, “I could sing them from right here if you want. Give you a front row seat.”

Geralt grunts.

“How’s your shoulder?” Jaskier keeps his tone light, his eyes grazing the body part in question, like he might be able to see it through Geralt’s shirt. There’ll be a new scar there. Jaskier has never gotten a full count, but he knows of a dozen scored across Geralt’s back at least, has tallied several across his arms, his ribs; he had plenty of them before their acquaintance, and he’s gotten half as many more since, and it only occurs to Jaskier now that every time Geralt rides off he wonders if there’ll be a new addition when they meet again. It’s not a thought he’s ever allowed to breach the surface before. He certainly doesn’t entertain the thought of tracing each one with his fingertips; he could never, with his tongue.

“It’s fine.” Geralt rolls the shoulder as though he means to make a point, but Jaskier doesn’t miss the wince of discomfort. “Shani does good work.”

“I know she does,” Jaskier says, seeking the woman’s telltale flash of red hair for a distraction and failing in every way, “but you looked ghastly when you made it back.”

 _You looked dead,_ he doesn’t say. _I_ _’m always afraid this is the time you’re going to be dead._

When he looks to Geralt again, the witcher is looking right back at him. “Thanks,” Geralt says dryly, “you always know just what I want to hear.”

“That’s the point of me, isn’t it?” Jaskier gives him what little he can muster of a smile. He has the passing thought that he should just go, rather than sitting here putting a damper over Geralt’s success all night, but the idea of letting him out of sight isn’t one he allows in for long.

The student with the braid is leading a new song now, most of the tavern around them belting it along with her. They’re Jaskier’s lyrics, all about his White Wolf’s defeat of a pack of ghouls—no, no, not _his_ , nevermind he coined the moniker. Much better than the Butcher of Blaviken.

“They do love you, don’t they,” Jaskier says, his voice lifting unnecessarily, all false cheer.

“They love that I slay their monsters,” Geralt corrects. He doesn’t sound upset or offended, just matter-of-fact, but Jaskier feels stung by it. Trouble is, he knows it’s true. There are a few honest friends in Geralt’s life, but most of the people here would turn on him with little provocation, just the wrong whisper in somebody’s ear.

“I—” Jaskier begins, but stops when a rather… _blessed_ brunette sidles up and plops herself onto his lap, granting him a real eyeful of those blessings. One of her hands holds a drink, the other already playing with his hair in a way he’d like, most other nights, but tonight he finds he’s not in the mood. “Evening, ‘Silla.”

“Why so glum?” Drusilla, a woman gifted at, among other things, baking, gives him her prettiest smile; he’s not in the mood for that, either. Geralt is looking down into his drink, something like a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, and that stings too. He doesn’t want Geralt to _smile_ when he’s being propositioned. Can hardly expect Geralt to know that though, can he? “Has the White Wolf upset you? Does he need a scolding?”

The question gives Jaskier more pause than he thinks it was really meant to. _Geralt_ hasn’t upset him. It’s the constant being left behind, and feeling it, and the not knowing if the witcher is going to get himself killed in a crumbling ruin somewhere for the sake of people who don’t give a damn—

 _Oh. It_ _’s like that, is it?_

“No,” Jaskier says, wrapping Drusilla’s braid around his hand, trying to sound like everything hasn’t changed tonight, because he’s the only one who knows anything is different. Geralt’s gaze has lifted again at Drusilla’s queries, sits level and unreadable on Jaskier. “I’m only disappointed I’m not the center of attention at the moment.”

“We could change that,” Drusilla offers, rearranging herself on his lap so her blessings are briefly at eye-level. Her mouth grazes his ear on, “Do you need cheering, Dandelion?” and it’s probably meant for only him to hear, but if Geralt wants to hear it, he will have.

“I think I’ll be all right where I am,” he says, not wanting to offend her; it isn’t her fault he’s just realized that he’s—that he’s—utterly fucked, when it comes down to it.

Drusilla leans back and pulls a pout. “You’re sure?”

“Hate to leave Geralt unattended.” Jaskier gives her a little smile and a wink. “You know how much of a disagreeable ass he can be.”

Drusilla’s eyebrows go up, while Geralt’s don’t in a way Jaskier thinks is meant to be making another point. Then she smiles and swoops in to give him a kiss on the cheek before hopping off his lap, her drink sloshing dangerously. “Lucky, lucky White Wolf,” she says, patting him on the arm and tossing, “Have a lovely night, boys,” over her shoulder as she goes.

Is he that obvious? It wasn’t that obvious to _him_ not half an hour ago.

“She was trying to get you into bed,” Geralt points out after a moment, entirely unnecessarily.

“ _Was_ she?” Jaskier widens his eyes. “I couldn’t see to tell with her breasts in my face like that. I’d best go after her, hadn’t I?” Here he makes as though to get up and do so, but Geralt puts a hand out and shoves him back onto his stool. “Hey, easy with the bard! What was that for?”

“She had a point,” Geralt says. He sets aside his drink and gives Jaskier a look like he can see right through him. “There’s something wrong with you tonight. What did you do while I was gone?”

“Nothing!” He feigns outrage. “Why d’you assume I’ve done something?”

“Because it’s you.”

“Thank you _so_ much for your faith in me,” Jaskier says primly.

_Have you told him you want him to fuck you?_

But that’s not it. He doesn’t want Geralt to _fuck_ him. He snatches Geralt’s drink and takes several gulps, wiping his chin with his sleeve when he thrusts it away again. All right, he _does_ want Geralt to fuck him, but that’s only a sliver of it.

He might have noticed himself falling in love with Geralt; it’s somewhat galling that he hadn’t.

“Jaskier.” Geralt’s voice is—never _gentle_ , Jaskier can’t even imagine what that would sound like, but it is something like it.

“It’s nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Jaskier _hmphs_ and turns around to slump forward over the table.

Just when did he go and—

He thinks of Geralt tossing him his own blanket on a chill night in the woods, refusing to take it back.

He thinks of Geralt’s hand steadying him before he fully tipped himself over the bank of a river.

He thinks of Geralt sitting across the fire, night after night after night, and knows he’s never going to place the moment.

“If you’re trying to get on my good side, this is a new tactic.”

“I’m not trying to do anything,” Jaskier says. Except for gathering his thoughts. He’s never been afraid to say much of anything to anybody, and Geralt’s no exception, and it isn’t exactly fear now, either; his fears run much deeper than rejection. He drags a hand through his hair and stares down at the table, at a spot that’s evidently suffered a dagger, then faces Geralt again. “I was worried about you.”

There’s a pause before Geralt says, almost cautiously, like Jaskier’s a rabbit he’s trying not to spook, “What?”

“I was _worried_ about you,” Jaskier says. This time he dresses it up with gestures at himself and then at Geralt, because it gives him something to do with his hands. “Worried you might not be back.”

“I am back,” Geralt says, lowering his drink to the table.

“But you might not have been.”

“I might not be every time.”

“I know that,” Jaskier says, snaps it, really. He knows he’s not being clear, and he can’t fault Geralt for the way he’s looking at him. “I know you could die every time you go out and do anything, and I might never know what happened to you, you’re a witcher, that’s what you’re _for_ , I _know tha_ —”

“Hey.” Geralt moves quickly, sets his hands on Jaskier’s shoulders.

“I realized something important about five minutes ago,” Jaskier goes on, suddenly feeling terribly calm with Geralt’s fingers flexing, “and it put all my worrying in a new light and I can’t have you dying without letting you know, so I suppose—”

Jaskier screws up his courage, and then he kisses the White Wolf.

He’s never known Geralt to express interest in a man before, and fully expects to find himself shoved unceremoniously away, probably to land on his ass several feet back. What he doesn’t expect is Geralt’s hand at the back of his head, fingers going tight in his hair to bring him closer; what he doesn’t expect is the warmth of Geralt’s mouth, at once willing-pliant and open against his own.

 _Oh. That_ _’s very good._

Geralt tastes of the alcohol he’s been drinking, and like those odd alchemical witcher concoctions he’s always swallowing, and just a little bit like what Jaskier expects magic tastes like. It isn’t a _pleasant_ combination, but it is Geralt, and that makes it better. Jaskier digs a hand into Geralt’s upper arm. The kiss is short-lived, and it’s Geralt who pulls back, but Jaskier can feel it on his lips when he says, “Really?”

Jaskier only manages a mute nod.

“Never shut up in your entire life, and you choose now?”

Jaskier drags some portion of his wits back into place to say, “And how, pray tell, does the great White Wolf suggest I respond to _really_?”

“That fucking name,” Geralt says under his breath.

“I thought you liked it!” He certainly hasn’t mustered any of his dignity.

“Hm,” is all he gets.

“I’m taking your lack of answer to mean you _do_ and you don’t want to say so, because you’re a bastard.”

Geralt does answer him then, in the sense that he kisses him again, and the sound Jaskier makes isn’t at _all_ dignified; nor is the way he clutches at Geralt’s shirt. “Really?” Geralt asks a second time, when he’s got Jaskier trapped against him with one thick arm.

“Yeah,” Jaskier says, admittedly a bit dazed. “Yes. Very good.”

That gets him a laugh, and it’s a good laugh, he can always tell the difference, and Geralt says, “So you realized…”

“Realized I needed to do that,” Jaskier says, his voice still unsteady.

“And then?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. Didn’t think you’d go for it.”

Geralt’s brow furrows. He takes a look around them and says, “We have an audience. I know that’s what _you_ like, but—”

“Not for _kissing_ ,” Jaskier says. Geralt is right, they _have_ garnered an audience, though they’re all trying to be surreptitious about it; not trying with any amount of success, mind. There’s still dancing and all, and the volume hasn’t decreased a bit, but there are looks being thrown this way, and smiles people don’t bother to hide, and he does like to be the center of attention, but not like this. “Tempt you away?”

“You don’t have to try hard,” Geralt says.

“No?” That’s nice.

“None of this is for me.” Geralt indicates the crowd. “It’s for them. I don’t need to be here.”

Jaskier deflates. He reaches for his lute before navigating toward the door, grumbling, “You really know how to make a man feel desirable, anyone ever tell you that.”

There’s no answer, but he can feel Geralt close behind him, and the moment they’re through the Three Little Bells’ front doors, standing in the brisk evening, lit hardly at all by struggling lanterns, there’s a hand on his ass and a mouth at his ear, and Geralt’s voice saying, “Better if I tell you I want to take you to bed, Jaskier?”

Jaskier couldn’t be much further from being a blushing virgin, but damned if he doesn’t feel and sound like one on a weak, “Better.” He knocks Geralt’s hand away and sets off at a trot, toward the Oxenfurt campus, where he’s welcome to free lodgings any time he comes through, and where he currently has a cramped one-room cottage, but it’s only the two of them sharing the space, and they’ve shared smaller, and besides—hardly matters how much space they’ve got.

The streets are largely empty, the entire city likely occupied by some celebration or another. The creature Geralt had gone off to kill stole nearly two dozen young ladies from Oxenfurt families, and slaughtered as many men who’d attempted to hunt it without the aid of a witcher. It had done its damned best to slaughter the witcher, too.

“You didn’t think I’d want to kiss you,” Geralt says into the dark, before Jaskier’s thoughts have wandered too far along that path.

Jaskier shrugs. “Not really.”

“But you decided to do it anyway.” Geralt sounds like he’s trying to make sense of the whole thing.

“Thought I might as well.” Jaskier avoids contact. It’s easier in the dark. Lots of things are. Remembering the blood on Geralt’s shirt isn’t one of them. “Look, I know you find me annoying—”

“Infuriating,” Geralt corrects, his voice rough in a way that makes Jaskier shiver. “ _Maddening._ ”

Jaskier throws his hands in the air. “Difficult to deal with! Call it whatever you like, witcher, but every time you ride away to kill some horrible creature, every time you leave me behind to do it, I’ve got to worry over you, except I’m a bard, and more than that I’m the bard who regales people with stories of _you_ , so maybe sometimes I overcompensate for not being allowed to acknowledge I might be afraid for you, and I—”

“Decided to tell me by kissing me,” Geralt interrupts him again.

“Oh, shut up, you can go back to The Three Little Bells,” Jaskier snaps. His heart’s pounding too hard, too fast, too uneven. “I only figured all this out right before I did that—and what about _you_ , then? You’ve never given any indication you might want—how long’s that been?”

He walks faster because it makes him feel better, not because he imagines for a moment that he can outpace Geralt.

Good thing, too.

“Jaskier.” Geralt catches his arm and turns him around, then catches his chin so he’s got no choice but to look up. “Witchers are allowed to be afraid of things too. Even the White Wolf of Rivia.”

“And what have you got to be afraid of?” Jaskier challenges, not sure how his mood’s swung around so quickly; it _would_ be Geralt that does this to him. He’s still buoyant from the kiss, but just as much he’s thinking of blood, of Geralt’s rent back, of so many things he doesn’t _want_ to be thinking about.

Geralt kisses him, and it’s slower, more tender than he expects it to be, and Geralt’s thumb is stroking just below his eye, and some of the tension leaves him. “I don’t like riding away any more than you like watching me go,” Geralt says after.

“Sure,” Jaskier says, and it’s a bit huffy, but there’s no attack behind it. “You’re always ready to go out and die, but—”

“I’m not,” Geralt says, kissing him again, and Geralt doesn’t say most things, and Jaskier’s not sure what it is he’s not saying right now. “Come on. I’d rather kiss you somewhere more comfortable.”

“You’d be perfectly happy to fuck me in a cave next to a stinking monster corpse,” Jaskier says, and turns away, leaving Geralt laughing behind him until the witcher catches up again.

“I didn’t know that was on the table.”

“It absolutely is not.”

The cottage, when they reach it, is dark, and Jaskier fumbles for a candle. There isn’t much here, but the bed is comfortable, and he has a handful of wine glasses he swiped from the kitchens just to be on the safe side—it hadn’t been Geralt he had in mind at the time, or maybe it had, maybe it has been for a long time and he’d just needed something of a kick in the ass to acknowledge it. He drops to the floor and rifles through a cabinet, muttering, “I’m sure I had a bottle of Touissant Red here earlier.”

A callused hand drags through his hair. “I’m not interested in the Touissant.”

There he goes, shivering again. It’s ridiculous, the way he’s reacting to Geralt. None of this is _new_ to him. Except, of course, for the part where it’s Geralt. He stays on the floor, but turns himself around, and, determined to regain himself, presses his mouth to Geralt’s inner thigh. “And what is it you are interested in, White Wolf?”

Geralt’s breath shudders. _Ha!_ Jaskier feels absurdly pleased with himself until Geralt touches his face says, “You,” and there he goes, moaning into Geralt’s palm, all undignified.

“Could you be more specific?” He noses against the fabric of Geralt’s trousers. Everything the witcher’s wearing is loose, Shani having forbidden him to wear anything more intricate that might agitate his wounds. Jaskier finds his cock, finds him already hard, and finds himself rather grinning. “Do you want me to do something with this?”

Geralt says a low, “Fuck, Jaskier,” and Jaskier murmurs, “That’s somewhat open to interpretation,” before unlacing him with deft, practiced fingers, and there is Geralt’s cock, wet at the head, and Jaskier wants to taste him.

So he does.

Before he saw Geralt naked for the first time, Jaskier half-wondered if the witcher preparations that gave the man his yellow eyes would change anything about his cock; they hadn’t, he learned early enough. The sound he makes when Jaskier swallows him half-down at once, _that_ _’s_ notable; Jaskier wants to preserve it in his memory until the day he dies. Geralt seems to be having some trouble deciding what to do with his hands, touching shoulders and cheeks and hair and lips. He’s long, but not horribly thick, and Jaskier’s had practice enough to manage, so on the third easy bob of his head, he takes him all the way down.

Geralt shouts something that sounds like it could be “Dandelion” if all of the vowels were selected at random, half the consonants removed, and it were blended together with quite the swear word. There’s a hand in his hair, then, pulling him off, and the sound of it is obscene. Geralt swears again at that, a third time at the sight of Jaskier’s face.

Geralt lands on his knees in front of him, practically fucks Jaskier’s mouth with his tongue.

“Not that I’m ungrateful,” Jaskier says when he’s been well and fully plundered, “but I meant for you to come down my thro—”

Geralt cuts him off with further creative use of his tongue. Cheating, that is, but Jaskier doesn’t protest. “The mouth on you,” Geralt breathes, his teeth dragging pleasantly over Jaskier’s lip.

“That was the idea, yes, or shall I sing you a song?” Jaskier offers, though every song he’s ever learned has fled his mind. If he tried he might be able to call up one of the bawdier ones.

“Hm. If you’re thinking about singing, I’m doing something wrong.” Geralt reaches between his legs, and the sound Jaskier makes would be embarrassing if they hadn’t already come this far. Oh, there’s a joke there, isn’t there? Come this far, but neither of them have made it to coming. “I mean to fuck you,” Geralt says, thoroughly cutting off any line of thought, “unless you have any objections.”

“Objectio—you’re _injured_!” Jaskier says, even as Geralt is pulling him back to his feet.

Appalled verging on outraged probably isn’t the tone Geralt expected, but he just makes a dismissive sound that certainly shouldn’t go straight to Jaskier’s cock the way it does. “I’m not that injured.”

The rest of what comes out of Jaskier’s mouth then is less ‘words’ and more ‘garbled mess’ that has Geralt looking at him with a little half-smirk, until that fades and he says, “Do you not want to?”

Jaskier shuts up and scrubs a hand over his face. “Do I not want to,” he says into his own palm, “the man asks if I don’t want to, of course I _want_ to, you absolute—”

“Then take off your clothes,” Geralt says, and gives him a slow kiss that has him up on his toes, before finishing on, “and let me fuck you.”

Jaskier doesn’t protest again. He turns away, because having Geralt in front of him is too much a distraction, and practically scrambles out of his shirt, his trousers, his smallclothes, abandoning everything in a heap. When he looks again, Geralt has fully shed everything of his own, and is watching him with appreciation and hunger, and Jaskier says, stupidly, “You’re very naked.”

“Are you going to stand there gawping like a fish all night, or are you going to come where I can touch you?”

Jaskier bites back the first quip that jumps to mind in exchange for, “Have you seen you? I’m entitled to a bit of gawping.”

Geralt’s eyebrows go up. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

“Different context though, isn’t it,” Jaskier says, flushing. “I need a moment to relish that I’m allowed to—”

“I don’t usually see you blushing.”

“Shut up.” _Good one, Jask. Excellently maneuvered._

“Relish later,” Geralt says, apparently growing impatient and closing the short distance between them, and then he’s got one hand on Jaskier’s ass, the other palming his cock, and Jaskier makes a sound that’s both surprise and pleasure. “You have oil here somewhere.”

Jaskier would feign chagrin at the assumption, except Geralt _has_ met him, and besides, it’s difficult enough to focus through Geralt’s thumb dragging over the head of his cock, again, again, again. He manages, “Drawer by the bed.”

Unfortunately, navigating to the bed means Geralt’s hand is gone a moment later, and he makes a sound of protest. Geralt laughs at him, and fuck, his smile is too much in the candlelight, Jaskier finds himself grasping for poetry to suit it, but there is none, it hasn’t been written yet, he’ll have to do it himself. “Liked that?”

“Hated it, obviously, can we get _on_ with this, I’d like one of us to have an orgasm before dawn, White Wolf.”

“Would you?” Geralt says, all teasing thoughtfulness. They’re beside the bed, then, where Geralt proceeds to sit with his back to the headboard, his cock standing gorgeous, and Jaskier could never pretend he’s doing anything but ogling now. Geralt offers him a hand. “Here.”

“Oh.” Jaskier blinks and gestures at Geralt’s frankly absurd muscles. He intends to put his mouth on them all, at some point. “I assumed you’d want to hold me down with all of…that.”

“Thought about it, Jaskier?”

Jaskier scowls at his half-smirk. “What d’you suppose I was doing while I had you in my mouth?”

The sound Geralt makes at that is gratifying, and so is the promise of, “Next time,” as Geralt catches his hand.

“Oh,” he says again, more faintly. “I like next time.”

He allows himself to be pulled onto Geralt’s lap then, the witcher’s hands a steadying presence. For a long time, they only kiss that way, hands wandering and hips occasionally shifting, and Jaskier only makes one embarrassing sound, when Geralt wraps a hand around both of them and Jaskier’s hips jerk, his mouth falling away from Geralt’s.

“Like that,” Jaskier says, his breath shuddering, and then his mouth finds the jagged line of a scar along Geralt’s clavicle. He traces it with the tip of his tongue, makes note of the way that makes Geralt shiver. His fingers find other scars, from claws and teeth and steel, and Geralt’s unoccupied hand tangles with Jaskier’s.

Jaskier has kissed men before, and fucked them, and been fucked by them, not much he isn’t up for exploring, but those men have been nearer to himself than they have to Geralt, soft and a bit round and pretty. He’s never been touched this way by hands so battle-roughened. Geralt kills monsters with those hands; they were drenched in blood hours ago, those hands. _Geralt_ was drenched in blood hours ago, was nearer to death’s lands than Jaskier can stand to—

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, and that’s when Jaskier realizes he isn’t doing much, has in fact gone still, and Geralt’s fingers are still tangled with his, but his other hand is on Jaskier’s face, tilting his head so their eyes meet. “Where are you now?”

Jaskier musters a smile, forces his thoughts to the man between his thighs, the _living_ , breathing man between his thighs. “Here.”

“No, you’re not.” One of those rough hands strokes up his back, and down, and up, and when it comes down again there’s a palm on his ass, and he makes a small sound. “Where are you going?”

Jaskier sags somewhat. “I was…seeing you, like you were this morning. I thought you were going to die.”

“See me now.” Geralt kisses the corner of his mouth, and then his neck, the bend of his elbow, his wrist, his palm, and Jaskier struggles to catch air. “I’m fine, Jaskier.”

“You are this time,” Jaskier says. “You told me yourself, there’s no after for a witcher. You’re going to keep going out there until something horrible kills you.”

“And then who will make sure you don’t get yourself killed?”

“That’s not funny.” Jaskier turns his face away, ready to lever himself off the bed until Geralt catches his hand and he reluctantly meets the witcher’s eyes. Geralt’s not smiling, not even as he leans in to kiss him.

“It wasn’t supposed to be funny. I told you,” he says, thumb tracing the curve of Jaskier’s jaw, “even witchers are afraid of things.” He urges Jaskier closer, until their chests are pressed flush together. “Tonight I’m in bed with you. Stay here with me.”

Jaskier takes a breath, tilting his head into Geralt’s touch, and says, “I’ll try.”

“Do you still want me to fuck you?” Geralt asks, his voice steady, his thumb finding its way to Jaskier’s lip while his other hand clasps around Jaskier’s wrist.

Jaskier nods.

“Words, Jaskier. I need to hear you say it.”

“I want you to fuck me,” Jaskier says, and if his blush had faded, it’s back now. He flicks his tongue over the pad of Geralt’s thumb and is very, very aware of what that does to the witcher’s cock. He’s shaking, when he leans over to rifle through the drawer and finally locate the oil, which he presses into Geralt’s hand.

Geralt frees the stopper with his teeth and spits it out to who knows where, urging Jaskier fully onto his knees with one firm hand kneading his ass. Then there’s an oil-slick finger teasing along the entrance to his body and he shifts his hips in what he hopes is an approving sort of way, and Geralt murmurs, “Hold still.”

“You have had sex before, right?” Jaskier threads his fingers into Geralt’s hair, trails his thumb over the shell of his ear. The witcher isn’t what you would ordinarily call beautiful, but Jaskier finds him extraordinarily so, like this. “Because you know, usually both parties do some movi— _oh_.”

Geralt has slid one finger into him all at once. The man does have incredibly large hands, and Jaskier learns them intimately as one finger is joined by a second, and then a third, working him open with painstaking attention. Geralt’s eyes, dark and focused, never leave Jaskier’s face; no matter he’s on top, Jaskier feels pinned in place by a predator, unable to drop his gaze.

Then Geralt’s fingers crook just so and his breath stutters on, “Please, Geralt.”

Geralt looks intolerably smug, continues to fuck Jaskier with his fingers until he’s shaking, just this side of begging all the more pathetically, and then he’s got a hand back in Jaskier’s hair, is kissing him, is repositioning him, his fingers replaced by the head of his cock.

“Okay?” Geralt says; he’s holding still, not pushing inside, and that’s its own special torment.

“ _Very_ okay, yes.” Jaskier attempts to roll his hips downward, but Geralt holds him in place. “Do you mean to fuck me, White Wolf, or torture me?”

Geralt’s mouth quirks. “You’re the expert in both, aren’t you?”

“Hilarious, maybe you had better change careers,” he says, and that’s when Geralt urges him to move. Jaskier is incredibly aware of every inch of the man beneath him as he’s filled, and yet it still seems a great shock when he’s fully seated, when Geralt is _in_ him, when there’s nothing more to take. He stays like that, trying to pretend he isn’t stunned.

His palms rest flat on Geralt’s chest, so he can feel the somewhat ragged rise and fall with the witcher’s breath, and when he starts to lift his hips, Geralt says, “Give yourself a minute.”

Possibly rolling his eyes while he’s sitting on Geralt’s cock isn’t the right response, but it’s what he does. “I’m not new to this, you know.”

Geralt practically snarls at that, which just makes Jaskier eagerer, and Geralt doesn’t stop him this time, when he moves. There are Geralt’s hands on his hips, somewhere between resting and gripping; there’s no effort to control his pace, just support. Jaskier lets his head tilt back, needs to break eye contact before Geralt sees entirely too much, and he thinks he hears, “Beautiful,” but he must have imagined that.

He isn’t imagining the teeth at his throat. _White Wolf._ The thought would make him laugh if he weren’t—if he weren’t coming down just right, if he weren’t gasping for air. Geralt’s fingers dig harder into his hips and he makes a sound that must come off as protest, because Geralt says, “Sorry, didn’t mean to—”

“No,” Jaskier says, and he does laugh a little now, breathless. The laugh deteriorates into a helpless moan as he rises, and comes down again. “No, it’s good, I like it.”

“Fuck,” Geralt says, hands returning to Jaskier’s hips, his ass, squeezing and spreading. “You look—” Jaskier doesn’t hear what it is he looks, as he falls on Geralt’s mouth with a strangled sound.

There isn’t much in the way of thinking, after that. It’s all movement, the rise and fall of his chest, of his hips, Geralt’s hands on his ass, his back, teeth rough on his throat, his head tipping back, his fingers digging hard into Geralt’s shoulders.

 _Geralt,_ is all there is. _White Wolf. Geralt. My White Wolf._

“Geralt,” he breathes aloud, and Geralt brings him in with a hand around the back of his neck, presses their foreheads together. Geralt holds him in place when he comes, and it doesn’t take much more than that, a few more wild thrusts, and Jaskier falls over the edge after him. He clutches Geralt’s face in both hands, kisses him hard and messy, and holds himself upright for a moment, but then he’s got to slump forward against Geralt’s chest, mouthing at anything he can reach.

“There’s your front row seat,” he breathes, and Geralt laughs.

There’s a moment of rearrangement—reliant on Geralt, Jaskier gone wholly boneless—and then he’s resting comfortably with a leg slotted between Geralt’s, combing his fingers through the witcher’s mess of hair. “Are you going to tell me about it?” he says. “Your most recent conquest?”

“You?”

“I’m not a conquest!” Jaskier says, voicing more insult than he really feels. “I meant the monster, you ass.”

Geralt pats his, at that, and says, “What, right now?”

“All right, yes, there’s the afterglow to bask in, and obviously I’m already composing my next ballad, so this tale will have to wait—”

“What next ballad?” Geralt interrupts.

Jaskier runs a hand from Geralt’s chest, down along his inner thigh. “The White Wolf’s Magnificent Cock.”

Geralt snorts.

“I’m not joking,” Jaskier says, straight-faced. “I expect it will be my most popular yet.”

“They’ll love me even more, I’m sure,” Geralt says dryly, and at Jaskier’s silence, “Jaskier?”

“I do, you know.” The ferocity with which he says this visibly startles Geralt. “Love you. Not for your monster slaying, but because I just love _you_ , even if you are the grumpiest bastard in all the kingdoms.”

Geralt doesn’t say anything for a long moment. That’s all right. Jaskier doesn’t need him to say it back, he _doesn_ _’t_ , it’s enough that Geralt is here with him, but he wouldn’t be sorry to hear it. Then Geralt finds his hand, lays easy kisses across his knuckles.

“Well,” Geralt says. “I only need their coin, not their love. I’ve got my bard.”

Jaskier’s breath stops for a moment. His night’s come back to possessives, then. “ _Your_ bard, am I?”

Geralt nudges his chin till their eyes meet. “Are you?”

It’s all the years of practice that allow him to draw on an airiness he doesn’t feel for, “You’ve just ruined me for anyone else, suppose I may as well be.”

And Geralt, heedless of his injuries, promptly flips him over, kisses him long and thorough, and says, “Doesn’t matter about anyone else then, does it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: I absolutely do not have time to write Witcher fanfic  
> brain, dumping this unceremoniously in my lap: no, yeah, I totally hear you
> 
> (there have been 2 additional ideas since then so yup this is fine)
> 
> (Regarding use of Jaskier vs Dandelion: As the series takes place in a secondary fantasy world in which neither Polish nor English are being spoken, I've elected to treat Jaskier and Dandelion as 2 distinct names for him. Just in case you're wondering what's up with that in here!)


	2. learning the path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "How much smut is too much smut?" I asked a friend whilst drafting this.

_All in green went my love riding_   
_on a great horse of gold_   
_into the silver dawn._   
_..._   
_Paler be they than daunting death_   
_the sleek slim deer_   
_the tall tense deer._

E.E. Cummings

Jaskier wakes to the sound of Geralt’s breathing, his cheek pressed to a hard plane of muscle that rises and falls in the easy rhythms of sleep. It isn’t the first time they’ve shared a bed, or even _this_ bed, and it isn’t the first time he’s woken pleasantly sore, in a tangle of limbs with another person, but it is the first time all of those things have been true at once. Geralt and a tangle of limbs and the smell of sex heavy in the air. Certainly the first time he’s woken to Geralt’s cock hard against his thigh.

He does consider, with Geralt’s heartbeat steady beneath his ear, doing nothing about it. Closing his eyes against the dawn light filtering through the window and attempting another hour or two of sleep. No doubt Geralt could use the rest. But there’s hardly any fun in that. His lips twitch into mischief. He raises his head to watch Geralt’s face; when he’s asleep, there are no frown lines, and just now his lips are parted, and the moment feels like something of a revelation.

This is the first morning Jaskier has allowed his hand to wend its way down Geralt’s chest, over his firm stomach and then between his legs. His fingers wrap loose around the witcher’s cock, thumb easing through the liquid gathered at the tip to help smooth his way. The oil would be better, but he doesn’t know where that landed during last night’s fun.

He likes the weight of Geralt in his hand, likes the sound of mingled surprise and pleasure as Geralt comes awake beneath his touch, likes especially the brief moment when Geralt’s eyes widen, like he hadn’t expected to find Jaskier still there, still naked, still touching him.

“Some witcher you are,” Jaskier murmurs. His hand never stills, a slow, steady slide up and down Geralt’s length, flicking his wrist just so on every return to the head of him. There’s more precome leaking between his fingers; he resists the urge to lick his lips, or possibly his hand. “Terribly unobservant. I might have been anything, touching you. Aren’t you supposed to be on alert at all times?”

Geralt’s answer comes in the form of a hand on his face, a rumbled, “You couldn’t wait for me to wake up?”

Jaskier regards the question, and disregards it again in a matter of seconds. “I suppose I could have,” he allows, unabashed. Geralt is pushing up into his touch now, his hips rolling slowly in a way that’s reminiscent of other interesting activities. “You’ll have to forgive me for presuming. You looked very tempting.”

“You presume your way into everything,” Geralt says, and Jaskier meets it with a broad smile.

“It’s come out in my favor so far, wouldn’t you say so?” He flicks his eyes pointedly between Geralt’s legs. “That’s certainly encouraging.”

He does lick his lips then, and apparently Geralt likes the look of that, or maybe the sound, as Jaskier finds himself hauled in a kiss. What it lacks in finesse it more than makes up for in teeth. He feels absolutely claimed by the time Geralt lets him go, and he’s fighting for air around, “Now who’s presuming?”

“You’ve got a hand on my cock,” Geralt says, almost like he’s trying for disinterest, but the hitch in his breath gives him away, “I think I’m allowed to presume.”

“That’s another presumption.” Geralt’s cock twitches in his hand; rough fingers close on his forearm, the only notice he gets before the man comes all over his hand with a groan. Jaskier lets his mouth graze Geralt’s in something that isn’t worth calling a kiss. “I like the way you say cock, Geralt, don’t suppose I’ve ever told you that before.”

That said, he fists his own arousal, because while he wasn’t hard when he woke up, he certainly is _now_ , and his palm is wet with Geralt’s come, isn’t that a thought to—

“Don’t.” Geralt knocks his hand away with a growl that makes Jaskier shiver. “That’s for me.”

Geralt’s fingers slide between his own, and then the witcher’s hand is between his legs, wrapped firm and slick around the length of him. He can’t decide where to put his own hands then, moves them from Geralt’s face to his chest to his shoulders, conscious of every scar, and especially of where Geralt’s wound remains across his back.

“What did you do with the oil last night?” Jaskier fucks into Geralt’s hand, his voice cracking on the question. There’s a lot to be said for a witcher’s stamina, the way Geralt is still hard beneath him, and Geralt laughs as though he’s said something funny.

“I don’t know,” Geralt says. “Don’t need it, anyway.”

“We don’t?” But Jaskier takes his meaning a moment later, when Geralt is opening him on two fingers at once, and Jaskier feels unfathomably filthy with Geralt using his own release to smooth the way for his fingers. Jaskier seeks Geralt’s mouth, and where the last touch of lips wasn’t a kiss, this more than earns the word. Kissing Geralt makes Jaskier feel like none of the ones he’s had before have really deserved to be called kisses; it’s different, redefining his understanding of what a kiss is, but he hasn’t made sense of it yet.

“Can you come like this?” Geralt asks the question right into his ear, when he’s pushing his hips desperately down, all but riding the man’s hand the way he rode his cock last night.

“Don’t know,” Jaskier says through a breathless rush of laughter. “Oh, there, _there_ , just like, just like that, please.”

He’s never found release solely from a person’s fingers before (it would be dishonest to specify a man’s fingers, as women have shared that pleasure as well), but as Geralt works a third finger in alongside the first two he thinks there’s a first time for everything. The stretch is all pleasure, and he still feels loose and pliant from last night, and it’s not so difficult for Geralt to find that angle that has Jaskier’s toes curling.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, and the sound of his voice, grindstone-rough with sleep and sex, is too much, and Jaskier’s so far gone he hardly registers the sound of his name, but he understands perfectly well when the next words are, “can you take four?”

“Hngh,” is all he manages, the tip of that offered (threatened? no, no, definitely offered) fourth finger tracing his entrance. The thought alone is enough to push him over the edge, his hips stuttering, but Geralt’s hand doesn’t falter, those three fingers still fucking in and out of him until he whimpers, too stimulated to take more, and his fingers dig hard into Geralt’s shoulders with a, “Too much, I can’t—”

So Geralt pulls him in close and kisses him, fingers easing free, leaving him feeling terribly empty. The witcher’s cock is hard against his stomach, and Jaskier has a wild urge to tell Geralt to fuck him, oversensitivity be damned, it would feel incredible. Before the words can make it out, Geralt’s closed a fist over his own cock, his knuckles grazing Jaskier’s skin with every quick pump. Jaskier breaks the kiss to watch, transfixed by the sight, encouragement falling half-formed from his lips.

When Geralt comes a second time, it’s in a thick coat on Jaskier’s belly, and Jaskier moans at the sensation.

“Fuck,” Jaskier says, all in a daze, still riding his own release, and sliding his fingers through the warm mess on his skin, a combination of Geralt’s release and his own. He brings those fingers to his lips and licks them clean; the sound Geralt makes is more animal than man, and Jaskier blinks innocently at him. “D’you like that, White Wolf? Watching me l—”

Geralt cuts him off with a thumb in his mouth, pressing down on his tongue; Jaskier doesn’t need any encouragement to suck at the digit, but he pulls off quickly enough to touch a kiss to the corner of Geralt’s mouth. He makes a sound of protest when Geralt begins to ease him aside in order to stand up. “And just where are you going?”

Geralt indicates Jaskier’s stomach. “Unless you had other plans.”

Jaskier bats his eyes, intentionally dramatic about it, and Geralt turns away with a, “Hm,” that bodes very well for the future.

Geralt returns moments later with a cloth that’s wet and unpleasantly cold. He’s already wiped his own stomach clean, so Jaskier reaches for the cloth, but Geralt doesn’t hand it over, instead attending to the absolute mess they’ve made of Jaskier himself. Jaskier shudders at the cold when it’s between his legs, front and back, and shivers for an altogether different reason when Geralt’s lips brush his inner thigh. Oh, to be as young as he used to be; but he doesn’t think it’ll take long to persuade his cock, should Geralt want another go.

Once he’s finished, Geralt abandons the rag at the foot of the bed and slides back in alongside him. “Do you plan to wake me up that way every morning?”

“I might,” Jaskier says blandly, finding a new scar to trace. He remembers this one. Geralt had fought off a pack of ghouls that had moved into a crypt, and Jaskier had dressed the wound for him afterward, and he’d caught Geralt looking at his hands, and he hadn’t asked; it occurs to him now, in a stupendously belated way, that they might have come to this sooner if he had. “We should have been doing this ages ago, and it seems to me morning orgasms put you in a better mood.”

Geralt snorts and kisses his shoulder.

“Besides,” he goes on, “we’ve got to revisit the subject of four fingers, haven’t we?” The kiss becomes a bite and Jaskier exhales a pleased little sigh, before adding, thoughtfully, “Maybe we should try for five, wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out— _oh_ , hell.”

His hand flies to Geralt’s face, because the witcher’s teeth are digging painfully hard into the flesh of his shoulder, but he doesn’t want him to stop.

“Geralt,” he says mindlessly, only wanting his lover’s name in his mouth, and he’s been so stupid, been an absolute fool of a bard. How is it he never realized how badly he wanted this man in bed with him? Maybe he was repressing it, convinced Geralt would never want anything with him, not like that. There’s no other excuse. “Geralt,” he says again, and that’s when Geralt’s teeth are gone.

“Do you want that?” Geralt’s breath shakes on his skin.

“I said it, didn’t I?” Jaskier lets his hand fall away from Geralt’s face. Instead he finds another scar, this one older than their acquaintance, but it looks like the work of a barghest’s claws. Geralt is more scar than man, Jaskier thinks, and in more ways than one. “So. Not to change the subject, but I told you last night that I love you, and you as good as told me you feel the same, unless I misunderstood something.”

He says all of this carefully, not wanting to step in the wrong place. To be sure, he’s stepped in the wrong place any number of times, in any number of conversations, but this is more important.

“You didn’t misunderstand anything.” Geralt cards a hand through Jaskier’s hair, tips his head back that way and kisses his throat, the tender place where his pulse beats. Jaskier makes a needy sort of sound, and there are Geralt’s teeth again. Sometimes those teeth are sharper than a man’s should be, when he’s had the right mutagen, but right now they are ordinary, and still Jaskier shivers beneath them, his own hand digging into Geralt’s bicep. There’s a single flick of tongue to sooth the bitten skin and Geralt says, “For once.”

“Hey!” Jaskier protests, but he finds Geralt giving him an unmeasured smile and that shuts him right up.

“Was that thought going somewhere?” Geralt prods.

“I think so, but I don’t remember now, you’re much too distracting,” Jaskier says. “I do hope I can walk today. You’re a bit much, you know.”

Geralt rewards him with another snort of laughter and kisses laid on his knuckles. “Are you hoping I’ll carry you?”

“No,” Jaskier says, though he’s sure Geralt could carry him like a ragdoll even injured. “Not with your back as it is. I think we should stay in Oxenfurt a week or two while you’re recovering, but I’m sure you’re ready to take off and find something vicious today.”

“I think I’m in bed with something vicious,” Geralt says mildly.

“Geralt.”

“Jaskier.”

“White Wolf,” Jaskier says, with greater emphasis.

“Dandelion,” Geralt says, just the same.

“You do remember,” Jaskier says, “the part of last night where I embarrassed myself horribly before you fucked me?”

“You didn’t embarrass yourself,” Geralt says, and it’s that tone again, the one that’s very nearly gentle.

“I disagree.” His tone is easy and bright, but there’s a part of him that feels newly brittle in Geralt’s arms. _Stay here with me,_ he hears again, and holds onto it, onto Geralt. “But you do remember the part where I don’t want you to ride off and get yourself killed.”

“I remember.” Geralt cups his face in one callused palm and leans in to kiss him, his thumb running along Jaskier’s lower lip when he draws away. “I’m not going to get myself killed.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” The brittleness escapes sharp into his voice and Geralt brings him in closer, holds him just like that for a while. “I’m sorry,” he says into the witcher’s shoulder. “I’m ruining the morning.”

“Only a little,” Geralt says, his arms still closed around Jaskier, caging him in so there’s no moving, not that he intends to go anywhere. “Just like any other morning.”

“You’re an ass.” Jaskier smiles despite himself, despite his worry. Geralt being an ass evidently hasn’t stopped him falling, no matter how unwittingly, in love with the witcher. “I remembered what I was going to say, before.”

“Did you?”

Jaskier turns his face so his voice is less muffled. “This, you and I, are we going to be—should I expect to find you in the witch’s bed, next time we cross paths? That’s always been the way of it, and I don’t think I can fault you if you still want—that, to do that.”

“I don’t.” Geralt’s arms tighten even more around him; Jaskier hadn’t realized that was possible, but Geralt manages it, the brute. “Yen is…complicated.”

“Are you calling me simple?” Jaskier sounds somewhat put out, and it’s only partially false.

“No,” Geralt says, without a hint of laughter in it. “Yen wants the world and I think she can take it for herself, but I’m not part of her plan.”

“That sounds like the reason you’re not right for her,” Jaskier says, “not the other way around.”

There’s a pause before Geralt says, “Yen is beautiful, and powerful, and—”

“Going to turn me into a pile of dirt the next time we meet her,” Jaskier grumbles.

“Yen is beautiful,” Geralt starts again, and Jaskier supposes he’d best shut up if he wants to hear the end of the sentence, “and powerful, and she isn’t what I want.”

“And what is it you want, White Wolf?” Jaskier meets his eyes.

“The bard in my bed,” Geralt says. “What you said earlier, about being on alert. I don’t have to be, with you. Do you know what you smell like to me?”

Jaskier flushes; they don’t often discuss Geralt’s heightened sense of smell, and there’s a difference between knowing Geralt can smell all manner of things and talking about what his skin smells like post-sex. “At the moment, I imagine I smell like an orgasm.”

“Like multiple orgasms,” Geralt agrees with a smile, and then his face turns serious, a familiar furrow on his brow, and his hand is in Jaskier’s hair again. “You smell like safety, Jaskier. Like home.”

Jaskier considers this. Then he draws Geralt into a long kiss, and punctuates it with, “Okay,” simple as that.

* * *

Regrettable as it is, they’ve got to drag themselves out of bed eventually. They’ve got to find Shani for checking on Geralt’s wounds (she’ll only show up on her own if they don’t, and Jaskier’s not one for unplanned voyeurism), and there are stomachs to be filled, and for all the pleasure involved in his present state, Jaskier wants a bath. He dresses himself in green before helping Geralt to put on the same clothes he wore last night, luckily unsullied by their activities; the witcher doesn’t need the help, but tolerates it with a great deal more patience than he usually would. Jaskier wonders a bit if it’s owing to the state of him and Jaskier’s fear over it, or to the new development in their relationship. Both, maybe.

They’re able to manage two birds in the campus great hall, where Shani’s sitting down to break her own fast. She greets them with a warm smile, but she’s not alone; sat beside her with a plateful of fruit and meat is the student from The Three Little Bells last night, and that one’s face is set with a smirk.

“Geralt, Jaskier,” Shani says, dipping her head to each of them. “Have you met Aniyah? She’s in training to be a bard.”

“Just what the world needs.” Geralt picks a roll from a platter and gives the girl a nod. “More bards.”

“We’ve met briefly,” Jaskier mutters, his appetite gone. This is the world making mockery of him. It really is.

Shani’s smile flickers uncertain, and Jaskier feels Geralt’s eyes on him too, but he keeps his face turned away, taking a new and great interest in the tapestry hung at the hall’s opposite end. “Are you feeling all right this morning, Jaskier?”

“Very well, thank you,” he replies without looking at her.

“You seem terribly sullen for a man who took my advice, Master Dandelion,” Aniyah says. There’s too much of slyness in it.

“I didn’t take your advice.” Jaskier finds an orange among the table’s assortment, not because he’s any interest in eating the thing, but because peeling it gives him a use for his shaking hands. There’s no call for him to be upset with Aniyah, except that she presented the matter so crassly last night; but he can’t expect her to have known he’s in love with Geralt, not when he’d never put those pieces together himself.

“Oh.” She sounds taken aback. “You didn’t tell him you wanted him to fuck you, then?”

Shani drops her fork; Geralt coughs on his drink.

“Aniyah—”

“No, I didn’t,” Jaskier interrupts, his gaze finally settling on the girl, on her braids and her still-smirking mouth. He supposes he did, actually, but that was at Geralt’s behest, not owing to the goading of a child with too much talent in her eyes. “That’s not what I told him.”

With that, Jaskier leaves the table, abandoning the orange half-peeled. His skin feels too hot, and he needs the fresh air of the courtyard. He feels more than hears Geralt following him, and could kick himself for interrupting the witcher’s meal, but he can’t stay there, and he doesn’t know why he feels so humiliated all over again.

There’s nobody else in the courtyard this morning. It’s just Jaskier and Geralt and a smattering of stone benches and trees. Jaskier chooses a bench to drop onto and scuffs his shoes against the cobblestone.

“She asked me that last night,” he says absently, not meeting Geralt’s eyes. “If I’d told you that I wanted you to fuck me. But it wasn’t that, you know.”

“I know.” Geralt sits beside him, puts a hand on his knee.

There’s no discernible reason he should be upset, but Geralt doesn’t tell him that, just waits, and eventually Jaskier says, “She realized it before I did. That I wanted you.”

“It was the same with Yennefer,” Geralt says, and Jaskier’s head snaps up, his eyes going wide with alarm. If the witch has seen him pining over Geralt without realizing it, he’ll never be meeting her eyes again; not that she usually deigns to grace him with eye contact, granting him less respect than she does her shoes. (They’re very fine shoes, spun from her magic as they are, but that’s not the point. Less respect than the _dirt_ on her shoes, that’s what he gets.)

“Tell me you’re joking,” he says, voice faint.

Geralt shakes his head, and his mouth quirks, and Jaskier momentarily wishes he’d be less handsome. Not even the scar along his eye manages to change that. “Not you. She caught me watching one night. You were singing. She asked me if I ever planned to tell you. I don’t think I did.”

“And when was this?” Jaskier asks with no small amount of suspicion; it’s been some time since they crossed paths with Yennefer.

Geralt gives a noncommittal shrug, and that won’t do at all. Jaskier will have to pry it out of his later, though, because Shani is striding toward them, fond exasperation fighting a scowl for possession of her mouth and eyes.

“I apologize for Aniyah,” she says when she reaches them. “She’s always been somewhat recalcitrant— _not_ unlike another bard I might mention—but I didn’t expect her to be so disrespectful to your face.”

Jaskier summons a shrug from somewhere. “No good bard was ever respectful.”

“I’ve scolded her,” Shani continues, the exasperation winning out, “not that she’ll remember it, and I’ve set her to counting medical supplies, which she might.” Her eyes find Geralt’s hand, still resting on Jaskier’s knee, and she says, “Something’s changed, I see.”

“I opened my eyes,” Jaskier says. He probably owes Aniyah some sort of thank you for it, but the thought only makes him grouchier. “Could you have a look at Geralt’s back now? The man doesn’t understand the meaning of taking it easy.”

“I’m more than aware,” Shani says.

Geralt looks wholly unapologetic. Typical.

“Jaskier, collect your breakfast and you can meet Geralt and I in the third examination room. I expect you remember the way?”

As it’s just across from the second examination room, where the floor was so recently redecorated in Geralt’s blood, Jaskier remembers very well. Aniyah is gone from the table when he passes back through the great hall to recover his orange, among other things, and he allows himself a few moments of hellos to professors he studied under, before he makes his way to Shani and Geralt.

Geralt’s shirt is off when he arrives, and Shani is giving his back a weary look. “Witchers,” she says under her breath. “You and your unnatural healing.”

Jaskier goes to stand beside her, abandoning the breakfast platter along the way, and surveys Geralt’s back alongside her. It isn’t healed entirely, still marred by lines of violence where the beast attempted to be the last the White Wolf ever faced. But it does look far better than the same wound would on anybody who hadn’t survived the Trial of the Grasses, who didn’t make use of mutagens.

“I don’t want you undertaking anything too strenuous,” she chides him, and Jaskier swallows a quip just the way he means to swallow his White Wolf’s cock later; and Geralt _is_ his White Wolf now, that’s a claim he’s allowed to make, and the thought spreads warmth from head to toe.

“What are you smiling about?” Geralt asks, rolling his shoulders and neck.

“I’ll tell you later,” Jaskier promises. “When we’re alone.”

Shani rolls her eyes. “Thank you for that, at least.”

Geralt stretches one arm across his torso, and repeats the action on the other side. Jaskier follows the lines of his muscles with appreciation. He has plenty of good uses for them in mind; maybe he ought to ask Shani just what she would consider _too_ strenuous.

* * *

The private baths in Oxenfurt are lovely. Expensive, but lovely, and the privacy is thoroughly guaranteed. The room they’re in is warm, the air steamy.

Geralt’s already stripped, and Jaskier has, admittedly a far greater appreciation for that view than any other. He takes good care with the buttons of his own shirt, dropping his gaze away from Geralt in order to give them the attention they deserve. When he looks again, Geralt is watching him, one side of his mouth curled up, and Jaskier says, “What’s the look for?”

“What was it you said last night?” Geralt cocks his head in a terribly predatory way. “I’m relishing.”

“You could relish from up close,” Jaskier suggests.

“Didn’t I say something like that?”

“No, you told me to relish later.” Jaskier stands with his feet at hip-width, one hand set on a hip and the other outstretched toward Geralt. “I’m perfectly happy to be relished right now, though I’ve also got some plans for you.”

Geralt closes the space between them, and there’s a hand on Jaskier’s hip, thumb pressing into the place just below the bone. “What plans do you have?”

“The kind you’ll like.” Jaskier leans up to kiss him, then turns away to gather up a tremendously fluffy towel for laying out.

“How am I supposed to relish you when you move like that?”

“I can move in lots of ways,” Jaskier says cheerfully, “and I expect you to relish them all, White Wolf.”

Geralt pinches his ass, not bothering to be gentle about it, and Jaskier yelps, going up onto his toes with it, then dropping back and finding the wall of muscle that is Geralt’s chest there. Hard arms encircle him for the briefest moment before there are hands on his shoulders, running their way down the front of him. One lingers at his chest, where fingers take care with his nipples, but the other trails all the way between his legs, strokes him into hardness. “Is this the kind of relishing you want?”

“Definitely moving in the right direction.” Jaskier isn’t sure if he wants to push forward or back, and settles for an indecisive shimmy that can’t possibly be alluring, but Geralt makes an agreeable sort of sound. “I thought you might like a massage before your bath.”

“Chamomile?” Geralt asks, rolling one nipple between thumb and forefinger until it’s grown hard, same as his cock. Jaskier chooses to ignore that part of his anatomy for the moment.

“Obviously,” Jaskier says, nearly forgetting the word as Geralt repeats his treatment on Jaskier’s other nipple. “Oh, that’s lovely.”

“Hm.” That’s probably directed at his choice of word, but Jaskier sticks his chin up, unconcerned.

“Lie down for me, would you?”

“Maybe I like what I’m doing,” Geralt says, his breath ghosting over Jaskier’s neck. “Seems like you do, too.”

“I do, but if you make me come I’m not going to be able to focus.” No point saying otherwise. Geralt apparently considers this for a moment, his fingers still playing unrelenting at Jaskier’s nipples; then he steps away and lays himself out on the towel, flat on his back, his cock hard against his stomach. Jaskier takes a moment just to look at him (there’s plenty of relishing yet to be done, after all, he might never be finished in any real sense of the word) before turning to rifle through his things for the glass container of oil he’d picked up on their way in, among other things. There’s the chamomile, but that will wait.

He drizzles oil over his palms and kneels at Geralt’s feet, starting there. He takes his time with the man’s body, working his way up his legs until it’s easier to straddle him for access to his arms. He’s good at massages, if he does say so himself. This is far from the first time he’s given Geralt one, though it’s very different with both of them hard, with his eyes drawn to the head of Geralt’s leaking cock; makes paying attention to what he’s doing a challenge, to be sure.

When he’s finished with the front, he urges Geralt to roll over, and the witcher goes willingly. His body’s gone loose, which Jaskier considers a satisfying result. He straddles him again, his cock nudging against Geralt’s ass, but he dedicates himself to the shoulders. He applies less pressure than he usually would, given the injury, but he’s thorough as ever.

Having gone over the witcher’s entire body once, he kneads his ass and murmurs an appreciative, “You really have got a lovely bottom, White Wolf. I’d best include that when I’m singing about your cock.”

“Any other parts of me worth a mention?” Geralt grunts.

Jaskier casts a critical eye over him. “All of them,” he decides. “Your hands, of a certainty. We mustn’t forget those. Nor your thighs.” He keeps his hands on Geralt’s ass, spreads his cheeks and listens to Geralt’s intake of breath. His thumb trails between, over the man’s entrance. “Would it be all right if I fingered you?”

“Fuck,” Geralt says, sounding for all the world like Jaskier’s already begun. “Yes.”

 _Well thought, Jask,_ he congratulates himself, touching a kiss to Geralt’s back before finding the oil again. He drizzles an amount over Geralt’s hole and pours a more generous portion over his fingers. He stretches himself out atop Geralt, murmuring, “Spread your knees a bit more, please,” and groaning when Geralt complies. His chest is pressed flush to Geralt’s back, and for long seconds he only teases the tip of a finger over the sensitive skin of his opening, feeling the way Geralt responds to him without pushing inside.

It shouldn’t come as any sort of surprise that Geralt is impatient, not long until he’s saying, “Did you plan to finger me today, or were you asking for next week?”

Jaskier laughs and groans at once, but pushes that finger into the witcher all at once, and the resultant groan is remarkably satisfying. “Do you like that?” he asks innocently, already pulling halfway out to push back inside. Geralt is so tight around the digit, so hot, the thought of what he might feel like around Jaskier’s cock is absolutely dizzying, but that’s not something Jaskier has in mind for today.

He pulls Geralt’s hair out of the way to speak directly into his ear. “Would you let me fuck you sometime?”

“If you’re lucky,” Geralt says, but the way he’s angling his hips for more makes Jaskier wonder if he might make Geralt beg for it. Isn’t _that_ a thought.

Geralt curses when he slots a second finger alongside the first, his hips rocking backwards in an unsteadying way, and Jaskier nips at the juncture of throat and shoulder. “You’re going to buck me off,” he chides good-humoredly, “and then where will we be?”

The only answer is a long groan, and Jaskier can’t resist thrusting his cock between Geralt’s thighs in time with his fingers; it’s not enough friction, not by half, but it takes the edge off. He adds a third finger only when Geralt feels nice and open around him, and there’s more oil with that one, and fuck, the way Geralt _sounds_ when Jaskier twists his fingers a certain way.

“Touch yourself for me,” Jaskier says, and it comes out as a demand. He trails his tongue along the shell of Geralt’s ear, sucks the lobe into his mouth, and feels it when Geralt reaches between his own legs. He can’t see, but he remembers well enough what it looked like this morning, watching Geralt’s fist work his cock. It doesn’t take long after that, between Jaskier’s hand and his own, and the moment Jaskier’s eased his fingers free he finds himself on his back without even the towel to protect him from the coolness of the bathhouse floor.

Geralt’s kiss is hard and deep, but brief as well, because then the witcher is kissing a wet line down Jaskier’s chest, all the way to his cock, painfully hard by now. Geralt swallows him without preamble, and Jaskier shouts, both pleasure and surprise, though he doesn’t think he ought to be surprised. Supposes he didn’t expect to find himself down Geralt’s throat so suddenly.

“Fuck, Geralt.” His feet scrabble for purchase on a most unhelpful floor. He moans around a warning of, “I’m not going to last long.”

Geralt shows no sign he cares a whit for the warning. His tongue does creative things that make Jaskier jealous of whomever taught them to him, but he’s had plenty of experience in his own right, it hardly makes sense to be jealous, and _oh_ , the wet heat of Geralt’s mouth is too much for him to handle. He tangles his fingers in the witcher’s white hair as his orgasm takes him. Geralt continues to lick and suck him through it until there’s nothing more, and Jaskier feebly pulls him up.

“I don’t think I can move,” he confides, his hand giving Geralt’s ass a squeeze as though to say _good job, you_.

“How are you going to take a bath?”

“Don’t suppose I am,” Jaskier says, in a tone that suggests life is very difficult indeed. “I’ll just lie here and have a nap.”

“I don’t think so,” Geralt says, and lifts him, and by the time Jaskier understands, he’s being dumped unceremoniously into the room’s large tub.

He comes up gasping and sputtering, to the sight of Geralt smirking at him.

“I give you a massage and this is what I get in return?” Jaskier splashes water at him. The witcher dodges, then eases himself into the tub as well, and Jaskier stops complaining once his legs are wrapped around Geralt’s hips. It’s rather the best bath he’s had in his life.

* * *

They return to The Three Little Bells for dinner that evening. The inn is calmer tonight, relatively speaking; the establishment is always plenty lively even without a celebration taking place. The cook here is the best in the city, and as Jaskier has no idea how long Geralt will have the patience to stay put, he means to take advantage of it as long as he can.

Drusilla is there again, accompanied by her daughter, an adorable thing of ten-years-old who asks Jaskier to “sing a White Wolf song,” and who is he to say no to a child? Drusilla herself makes subtle inquiries as to Jaskier’s night; she’d seen the kiss, and she’d seen him leaving with Geralt—“Dandelion, sweet,” she tells him conspiratorially, “everyone saw that”—but had it gone well, she wants to know? Jaskier grins over his shoulder, assuring her he’d had a fantastic night.

The grin fades some when he spots Geralt caught up in conversation with a small group: an elderly couple, a pretty brunette probably a handful of years away from Jaskier in one direction or the other, and a trio of children, two boys and a girl. He’s traveled long enough alongside Geralt of Rivia to have a sense of these things. He excuses himself from Drusilla and her daughter with a kiss to the back of each hand, and neatly navigates his way back to Geralt’s side.

“Hello, hello,” he says, all false-bright cheer. “What am I missing out on? Nothing horribly fun, I hope?”

“Jaskier.” Geralt indicates the seat beside himself, left empty, isn’t that sweet. “This is the Greloff family. They were just about to tell me what it is a witcher can do for them.”

“Of course they were.” Jaskier’s smile stays up out of sheer obligation. Never allowed to be afraid for the White Wolf of Rivia, that’s him. “Are you any relation to Edwin?”

One of Oxenfurt’s natural history adjuncts; Jaskier has spoken to him a handful of times, given the man’s interest in the witcher schools.

“I can’t say we are,” the old man says, and makes introductions that have likely already been made. His name’s Niklas, his wife is Magda, their daughter Cina, and there are her children, David, Vali, and Johan. “We had a farm a day and a half of travel to the south,” he says, following that. “Lost hold of the place a summer ago. There are these trees, see, popped out of the ground spitting poison and attacking anything came near.”

“We want to reclaim the land,” Cina says, the hope and determination on her face suchlike Jaskier thinks he ought to be turning it into a poem as they speak. “It’s an important day for us, just two from now. We hoped, Geralt, you would be willing to escort us and remove the—”

“Archespores,” Geralt interrupts. “Maybe Coccacidium, can’t be sure until we’re there.”

“So you’ll do it?” Magda perks up.

“Two days,” Jaskier says, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin. “Cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?”

Cina shakes her head. “We’ve had little choice. The witcher hasn’t returned to Oxenfurt until now, and our problem couldn’t take priority over the whole city’s.”

Fair points, all of them. He and Jaskier have been away from this city for a long while. Still, Geralt’s not in the best condition to do battle with Archespores. They’ve run across the damned things often enough, and their poisons can be nasty. But there’s no use arguing the point; Jaskier can already see the agreement in Geralt’s posture.

Sure enough: “We’ll leave at first light,” Geralt says “Do you have horses, a wagon?”

The farming family does have a wagon, and two horses left to pull it, along with several sheep and goats and chickens. So come first light, far away from waking the White Wolf with a hand on his cock, Jaskier finds himself strumming his lute somewhat despondently in the wagon, while Geralt rides alongside on Roach.

The children are absolutely fascinated by him, which he would ordinarily bask in, but he’s too busy worrying over Geralt.

 _Two days. They couldn’t wait a few more? Geralt couldn’t tell them their farm would have to keep?_ But of course he couldn’t. That wasn’t his way.

“Toss a coin to your witcher,” Jaskier sings under his breath, and Cina glances over her shoulder where she’s driving the wagon, a wry smile on her face.

“You don’t want to do that,” she says. “The little ones will never stop, if you get them started.”

“That sounds like Jaskier,” Geralt says, and Jaskier searches for something to toss at him; unfortunately, there’s nothing, unless he wants to lob his half-eaten apple, but better he save that for Roach. He supposes he _could_ throw a chicken, but decides against that for a variety of reasons.

It’s a dull day of travel, and Jaskier spends it drifting in and out of sleep. Once, he wakes to a flurry of whispering and opens an eye to find the children in a line beside him, peeking over the side of the wagon at Geralt. “What are you lot up to?”

“He’s a witcher,” says David, the oldest-looking of the three, probably twelve or thirteen; he says it quietly, like this might help him go unheard, and Jaskier doesn’t bother to disabuse him of the thought.

“He is,” Jaskier agrees pleasantly. “That’s why your family’s hired him.”

Johan, who can’t be any older than seven, (with Vali in the middle, likely nine or ten), says, “People say witchers don’t have emotions. They’re all taken out.”

“People are liars.” Jaskier sits up straighter and turns to look at Geralt’s profile. There’s a pang in his chest. He hates that rumor. Makes people feel all right about treating witchers as less than human, too often. “Witchers have plenty of emotions. Just as much as you do.”

“And keen senses,” Geralt says before pushing Roach into a canter and going off ahead.

“See that?” Jaskier gives the saucer-eyed children a wry smile. “I think you hurt his feelings.”

The children look at each other, evidently flabbergasted.

Vali is the first to recover, but she looks very shy as she asks, “Did my granda hire you, too?”

“No. I’m no good at fighting monsters.” Jaskier looks ahead, at the shape of Geralt. “I’m here for the witcher.”

With that, Jaskier tucks his chin in again and picks at bits and pieces of songs—none of them particularly dedicated to his White Wolf’s anatomy, given the children, and heaven forbid he scandalize the chickens—until they stop for the evening, just after sunset, when Geralt determines it’s too dangerous to keep going in the dark. This close to Oxenfurt, there aren’t terribly many beasts on the roads, but there are always the more commonplace wolves, and nobody argues with making camp.

Geralt builds the fire, well-practiced at it, and Cina and Magda provide a dinner of hare. Time spent at the campfire is more pleasant than the day itself has been; Jaskier sings for them, including several of the land’s more renowned songs, opportunity for the others to sing along. Geralt refrains, of course, standing some fifteen feet away with a hand on the hilt of his steel sword, peering out into the darkness.

The children are sent to bed down first, despite protests that they aren’t tired. “They’ll be asleep in five minutes,” Cina says when she returns from tucking them in.

“Suppose we’d best quiet down then.” Jaskier begins to set his lute aside.

“Nonsense.” Niklas gestures for Jaskier to hand him the instrument. “I can play a bit, if you’ll permit me, Master Dandelion.”

Jaskier hesitates—the lute _was_ a gift from Filavandrel, but Niklas is smiling so earnestly at him, he can’t think of a diplomatic way to say no. So he hands it over, and watches Niklas’ hands find the right places to fit, and then the old man is strumming a tune, a merry thing. Cina reaches for Jaskier’s hand and pulls him deeper into the firelight.

“Dance with me, Dandelion?”

“I never say no to a pretty girl,” Jaskier says, donning his most charming smile. She _is_ a beautiful woman, and he imagines that just the other day he’d have done his best to charm his way into her bed, but he’s pleased enough to dance with her. He picks a daisy from the side of the road and tucks it behind her ear, admiring the way her cheeks go pink.

There’s no telling how long they dance, only the moon in the sky showing any passage of time, but Cina laughs into Jaskier’s chest when Niklas announces his old hands are finished. He might kiss her, and she might let him, but he doesn’t want to. Instead he steps back and gives her a flourishing bow, kisses her hand and says, “My lady, you were wonderful.”

It’s several minutes after that to help in dousing the fire and seeing everyone off to sleep in the wagon bed. Only then does Jaskier glance about for Geralt. The witcher’s out of sight, and that puts an unpleasant tug in Jaskier’s gut. Roach is ground-tied beneath a tree, pricks her ears forward when Jaskier pats her withers and tucks his lute safely away from her hooves.

“Geralt,” he calls, soft, not wanting to wake the children. Geralt would like as not hear him at a whisper in any case. “Where’ve you gone?”

There’s a familiar call from up the hill, and relief washes through him. He follows that direction. Geralt is propped against a tree, looking off at nothing, or possibly something too far away for Jaskier to notice. “What are you doing up here?”

“You were having a good time,” Geralt says. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Jaskier raises an eyebrow. “Interrupt what?”

Geralt tips a pointed look back the way they’ve come.

Jaskier’s mouth drops open. “Hang on,” he says with a slow-dawning realization and glee, “are you jealous? Because I was flirting with Cina?”

Geralt doesn’t answer, and Jaskier laughs, catching both of the witcher’s hands and leaning all his weight against him.

“I was being sociable, fool witcher.” He kisses him until Geralt kisses back; if there’s anything dangerous in the trees around them, it will have to wait until Jaskier is finished with his White Wolf. _His._ “I told you you’ve ruined me for anyone else, didn’t I? I’m yours, you know.”

“She seems—”

“Pretty? She is, very, but I no more mean to bed her than you do Yennefer. Is that really something you’re worried about?”

The look on Geralt’s face tries to be indifferent, and his voice succeeds at being gruff, but the words are—well, Jaskier would never call Geralt _vulnerable_ out loud, but there it is. “I’ve spent a lot of years watching you go to bed with beautiful women, and with beautiful men, and saving your ass when you put your cock somewhere you shouldn’t have. You never showed any sign you wanted _me_ to take you to bed.”

“Because I’m an idiot,” Jaskier says, exasperated. “Because there I was being in love with you and not realizing it. How many times do you need me to repeat the love part? I like sex, Geralt, but I wasn’t in love with any of those people, that’s just for you, and I would hope you’ve noticed I like having sex with you as well.” His voice has risen, and he casts a look in the direction of the wagon, but there’s no sound to his ears, and Geralt gives no indication that he hears anything more.

He goes on more quietly. “Beautiful women and beautiful men, honestly, are you saying you never told me how you felt because you thought I might not find you attractive enough? I’m not sure what’s worse, that you find me shallow or that you didn’t think I—”

Jaskier cuts himself off as Geralt grabs him by the wrist and brings that hand to his face. Places it just below his eye.

“Oh,” he says, just for Geralt’s ears, thinking of things that witchers might be afraid of. He thinks his heart might break with the understanding. “Oh, Geralt. No.” He pulls Geralt’s face down to kiss the line of that scar, his finger tracing the part above his eye. He blows out a breath that rustles its way through Geralt’s pale hair. “I love you and every scar, my brave hero. Any other fears you need me to assuage while we’re out here? Seems as good a time as any, if you ask me.”

There’s no answer, and Jaskier sighs. “All right, then. Let me be clear. I don’t want anybody but you, as long as you’ll call me your bard.”

Geralt says something Jaskier can’t quite catch, but it sounds like assent.

Jaskier takes half a step back to study Geralt’s face in the darkness. “You never answered me, you know.”

“About what?” The suspicion on Geralt’s face is completely unfair.

“How long you’ve—this.” Jaskier gestures between the two of them. “I’ve asked twice now and you keep avoiding the question. Just how long have you been wanting to be the witcher of my dreams, White Wolf?”

Geralt gives him a significant look. The weight of it is startling.

“How long?” he demands again.

“Long enough,” Geralt says.

“That’s not—”

Geralt quiets him with a kiss. Avoiding the question again, the bastard, but Jaskier lets himself be tempted away from seeking an answer. It starts off sweet enough; not chaste, but sweet, and then Geralt has to go and nip at his tongue, and it’s a shock that his knees don’t go out beneath him.

“I hope you mean to fuck me, after that,” he mutters, his cock taking an interest in proceedings.

Geralt’s chuckle is low and deep and not at all helpful. “You’re insatiable.”

“You already knew that.” Jaskier pairs this with a salacious smile. “We’ve got an indeterminate amount of time to make up for, haven’t we? Also, I can’t help but notice I haven’t been held down yet, and I seem to recall you saying—”

It’s the work of a moment for Geralt to change their positions, to push Jaskier’s back to the tree and hold him there for another thorough kiss. “Did you bring oil up the hill with you?”

“I don’t have to answer that question,” Jaskier says primly; Geralt slips a hand into his pocket and makes a satisfied sound. Jaskier’s tone doesn’t change. “You said it yourself, White Wolf. I’m insatiable.”

“Fuck,” Geralt growls, “damn the monsters, you’re going to be the death of me.”

“And can you imagine a better way to go?” Jaskier asks, and makes an undignified sound when Geralt pulls him away from the tree, deeper into the woods, out of sight of anyone who might pass by. He’s pushed into the grass there, onto hands and knees, and Geralt’s weight settles over his back.

Geralt makes short work of exposing his ass to the late night breeze, but there’s nothing quick about the way he readies Jaskier for his cock; he’s getting the sense Geralt enjoys that part of bedding his bard quite a bit, and he’s not going to complain about being well-fucked by fingers. His head dips low, forehead skimming the grass, and he makes a high sound when Geralt’s fingers find that little bundle of nerves that turn his spine to liquid, and Geralt covers his mouth with his unoccupied hand.

“Quiet,” he says into Jaskier’s ear, and Jaskier moans into his palm.

Too soon and not soon enough, Geralt’s cock is at his hole, and he’s pushing back, eager to have it inside him again. Geralt isn’t having any of that, however, splays his palm against Jaskier’s back and shoves him _down_ , where he’s got no leverage to do anything except wait for Geralt to push inside, so torturously slow, and that first roll of Geralt’s hips has him struggling to do anything, anything at all to make Geralt fuck him properly.

“Is this what you wanted?” Geralt’s voice is rough, and Jaskier makes another hapless attempt to shove his ass back.

And then Geralt moves, his teeth fastening to a spot on the side of Jaskier’s throat, his rhythm slow and hard and steady, pushing Jaskier inexorably toward that edge, just this side of not enough.

“I love you,” he gasps through it, into Geralt’s hand. “Oh, fuck, I love you, please, please, Geralt, I need—”

Geralt’s other hand finds his cock, and it’s two, three, four quick strokes of a tight fist, the pressure just right, before he’s coming all over the grass, all over that hand, and Geralt’s thrusts grow wilder, rougher, and when Geralt’s orgasm finds him, it’s nearly as overwhelming as his own.

Geralt is gentle as he pulls out of him, of course he is, and there’s really nothing to clean up with out here, so Geralt tears a strip of fabric from his shirt and wipes up between Jaskier’s legs, where Jaskier feels the result of Geralt’s release sliding down his skin.

“Was that okay?” Geralt asks, and it’s all Jaskier can do not to laugh at the question; but there’s a note of genuine concern there, and it would be inconsiderate to laugh at that.

“That was exactly what I wanted you to do to me,” Jaskier assures him. They oughtn’t stay here for long, but there’s nothing wrong with resting his head on Geralt’s chest for several minutes. “Also, I’ve decided you should only come inside me. It’s a terrible waste otherwise.” Geralt is still coughing when he adds, all consideration, “In my mouth counts, of course. We’ll have to work something out if I’m to fuck you.” He pauses, and sits up to peer at Geralt’s face; the witcher’s mouthing wordlessly, and looks somewhat gone. “Geralt, are you all right? My White Wolf?”

Geralt growls and yanks him back right.

They stay in the grass for more than a few minutes.

* * *

The second day of travel is no more interesting than the first, though it’s certainly the tenser of the two. Jaskier examines Geralt’s wound in the morning, and he’s no kind of expert like Shani, but it looks fair enough to his eyes, and Geralt claims there’s no pain.

Scarcely an hour before sunset, they reach what Niklas says is the edge of the Greloff property.

Geralt goes on alone from there, his silver sword drawn ready.

Jaskier plasters on a smile and conjures several songs, but he doesn’t do much singing before determining none of them are in the mood for it, least of all him.

Geralt returns with leaves in his hair and a scratch down one cheek, but otherwise none the worse for wear, and Jaskier lets out a breath he might have been holding for an hour without noticing.

They continue on their way as a group, Jaskier riding behind Geralt on Roach with his arms around the witcher’s stomach, his cheek pressed to his armor; he needs to feel him there.

“So,” he calls to Cina, “what is it that makes this night so special you had to be back in time for it?”

“An enchantress owned this land a long time ago, years before our family,” Cina calls back. “She placed a spell on the property so that once a year—oh, it’ll be better if you see for yourself, Dandelion.”

They reach the abandoned house and barn soon enough, partially grown over with enthusiastic plantlife, but largely untouched by weather; it’s only been a year, after all, though it does look like the barn roof may need some mending. Jaskier and Geralt wait outside while the Greloffs make their way inside. The goats and sheep and chickens seem pleased to be back as well.

“Were there many?” Jaskier asks, indicating the collapsed remains of a Coccacidium. Nasty things. He’s felt their poison himself, and is lucky to have survived the experience. Geralt’s got igni, though, and this Coccacidium is thoroughly scorched.

“Half a dozen,” Geralt says. He’s handled more than that in the past, but Jaskier is grateful there weren’t that many now.

“One of them got you.” Jaskier dabs at Geralt’s face with his sleeve.

“Only a little.” Geralt catches his hand and slides their fingers together. “I’m okay, Jaskier.”

“I know that,” Jaskier says; they can both feign nonchalance, as it happens.

“It’s time!” Johan races out of the house, a grin dominating his face. David and Vali are close behind, followed at a hardly slower pace by Niklas, Cina, and Magda. He crows, “Look, look!”

Before the question of just what they should be looking at can be raised, there’s motion in the air. Flecks of white light spin into being from the grass and come together in the shapes of birds. Larks, perhaps, if larks were white, or possibly robins?; bird identification has never been one of Jaskier’s greater specialties, and these are less colorful than their living counterparts. The birds swirl in the air, their wingbeats silent.

One exceptionally large specimen lands on Cina’s shoulder and Jaskier winces at the sight, but the spectral talons don’t appear to do any harm. She approaches them and indicates the bird. “My husband,” she says, and the importance of the night fits into place as she returns to her family, the living members.

Jaskier and Geralt stand on the periphery, watching the spectral, winged Greloffs dance with the human Greloffs. It’s a little eerie, but mostly it’s beautiful.

“It was the djinn,” Geralt says, so quiet Jaskier almost misses it.

But he does hear, and it’s enough to pull his eyes from the birds; the witcher is studying him, eyes unreadable. “Geralt,” he says, slow and more than a little astonished, “it’s been six years since the djinn.”

“I know it has,” Geralt says steadily. “I came that close to losing you.” A muscle jumps in his neck with the remembering. “I would have done anything to save you. That was when I knew.”

“Fuck.” Jaskier’s mouth feels full of something unpleasant, like cotton, or possibly a fistful of dandelions. “And you weren’t going to say anything.”

Geralt looks at him for a breath of eternity. “I wanted you to stay.”

“You didn’t think I would?” Jaskier swallows painfully.

Geralt’s mouth does something that isn’t a smile, just the barest twitch at one corner of his mouth. “I didn't know.”

Jaskier’s fingers go so tight it’d hurt a man more human than his White Wolf. The words knock the air out of him as sure as Geralt’s fist, before they found Torque. “And they say witchers don’t feel anything,” he says, quite sure Geralt feels more deeply than anybody he’s ever known. His voice wavers. “I’m so sorry.”

Geralt’s nose wrinkles. One of the birds sweeps scarcely an inch above his head and he gives it no notice. “What for?”

“I took so long in catching up,” Jaskier says. “That was unkind of me. I didn’t mean to be.”

Geralt dips in to kiss him, and Jaskier feels his smile. He says, his breath on Jaskier’s lips, “But you did catch up.”

Jaskier shifts to lean his head on Geralt’s shoulder. “Forgive me?”

“Hm.” Geralt strokes a thumb up the center of his palm. “I’ll consider it.”

“What if I—”

Geralt covers his mouth, this time with a palm that tastes of dirt and silver and ash, and Jaskier can’t say he minds. For all the years he’s spent at the witcher’s side, this is a new turn in the path; Jaskier can’t wait to see what might be found around the next bend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might have a few more chapters on the way, but I'm going to leave it marked as complete because I'm juggling way too many projects to make any promises. (If there are any requests, for this continuity or another, feel free to ask and I'll see what I can do, time permitting!)
> 
> Also, I'm pretty sure Bedding His Bard is a title you can find in Ye Olde Bookshoppe. Presumably with a bodice-ripper-style cover.


	3. follow the monsters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let it be known that I am picking and choosing lore from the show/games/books as I choose. It's all a bit fast and loose here. (But the characterization is based largely on the show.)
> 
> (See end for additional tags.)

_when every leaf opens without any sound  
_ _and wishing is having and having is giving—  
_ _but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense  
—alive; we're alive, dear_

E.E. Cummings

It’s much too early in the morning for Jaskier to be leaning up against Roach, his fingers loose in the mare’s mane largely as a countermeasure against falling over. The sun’s not even up properly. If the _sun_ _’s_ not awake, _they_ shouldn’t be awake, unless it’s for pleasurable purposes, and standing in a barn is distinctly not pleasurable. He supposes for Geralt it might be.

Roach is saddled and largely readied for their travels, the bulk of their supplies packed onto a stockier dappled gelding they purchased only after Geralt watched him work through his paces and examined his hooves and whatever other parts of a horse you’re meant to examine before handing over a fistful of coin. Jaskier doesn’t trust the beast; its eyes are much too clever. According to Geralt, that’s the point.

If the man ever did retire, he thinks, it would be to work with horses.

In any case, he’s made the whole ‘sun’ argument to Geralt any number of times to no avail; Geralt’s always told him he’s welcome to sleep until the sun’s at its highest if he likes, but Geralt won’t be there when he wakes up, and it’s difficult to tell how serious Geralt is being at any given time, and Jaskier’s never taken the chance. The pleasurable purposes bit is a newer addition to his argument, one he hoped to find more effective, and what a disappointment that’s been.

“Not a single orgasm before he dragged me out of bed,” Jaskier says dolefully, breathing in the smell of horsehair and straw. “Not _one_.”

“Roach doesn’t need to hear that.” Geralt reappears around a corner, the last of their supplies slung over one shoulder. “And you’ll survive.”

“I’m really not sure I will. One does get used to a thing.” Jaskier confides this in Roach’s ear; the mare has evidently had enough of his leaning, and dances several steps away, leaving him to catch his balance and scowl at her. She only likes Geralt, the crabby thing. He mutters, “Kindred spirits, the pair of you,” while Geralt pats the beast’s neck and finds the best way to arrange their things.

“What was that?” Geralt says, like there’s any chance he hasn’t heard perfectly well.

“I said,” Jaskier says, permitting himself to drop onto a well-placed bale of hay and close his eyes, “you and your horse deserve each other.”

There’s a grunt from Geralt that doubles as a laugh.

Jaskier dozes. He doesn’t mean to—means, in fact, to provide wildly entertaining commentary while Geralt readies Roach—but his eyes are already shut, and he’s gotten used to waking in his own time, Geralt’s heart beating steady beneath his ear. He hardly knows he’s sleeping until Geralt’s voice draws him up from it, an unobtrusive, “Jaskier, come on. Don’t make me leave you here.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Jaskier stifles a yawn with the back of his hand.

“I wouldn’t?”

“No, you’ve gotten much too used to—”

Geralt interrupts by pulling him to his feet like he weighs nothing at all. Jaskier can’t be bothered to complain; he settles for relaxing against the man, knowing he won’t be allowed to fall. He wouldn’t have been confident of that before, and he supposes Geralt may still let him topple over for a laugh, but he’s sure enough, and the witcher doesn’t move, except to rest one hand on Jaskier’s back.

“You’re sure we can’t just go back to bed for a little while? I can be quick.”

“A quick nap,” Geralt says pointedly, “or a quick fuck?”

Jaskier laughs, and tips his head back to ask if both would be out of the question (though both naps and fucks are much better when taken slowly), only to find himself being kissed, and being kissed well. Drowsiness flees with Geralt’s mouth against his own. When Geralt eases out of the kiss and rests his chin atop Jaskier’s head and makes no move to go anywhere, Jaskier briefly thinks he ought to take the moment for what it is; but then, who would he be if he did that?

He’s got one hand low on Geralt’s stomach already, and it’s so easy to let it slip down even further, to palm at the shape of Geralt’s cock through his trousers, and Jaskier is close enough in physical proximity and familiarity both, to note the slightest intake of breath. “Come now,” he says cheerfully, “don’t you think it would be nice?”

“I think you’re a menace.” Geralt does stop him, catches Jaskier’s fingers, when he makes to unlace him. “Is it that much of a problem that neither of us got off before getting out of bed today?”

“There are six years of orgasms to make up for,” Jaskier points out. “Seems a waste of more time if I’m not giving you one as often as I can manage.”

Geralt steps back and gives Jaskier a wary look. “That’s not what I—”

“I know, I know you wanted more than what’s between my legs, don’t worry your pretty white head,” and Geralt’s mouth quirks at that, “but you do like it.”

Geralt just shakes his head and says, “Menace,” again, but Jaskier knows he does; it would be impossible not to know, the way they’ve carried on.

They’ve been two weeks in Oxenfurt since escorting the Greloffs back to their plot, which is two weeks more than Geralt would have preferred, but Jaskier and Shani are very persuasive, between them. Their methods differ drastically. Shani wields a medic’s steel—not in a literal sense, she hasn’t actually pointed a scalpel at Geralt, though she has come near to it—while Jaskier makes use of a lover’s sweet words, and if he’s taken advantage of his own confession that he’s afraid Geralt’s going to ride off and get himself killed, he refuses to be faulted for it.

Geralt will, of course, return to his monsterslaying ways at some point, but if Jaskier can stop him doing it before he’s fully recovered from his battle with Oxenfurt’s terror…well.

These two weeks have been different from the previous years spent, on and off, at Geralt’s side. How could they possibly be the same? Jaskier doubts very much any but the most observant of folk would notice. They haven’t gotten sickeningly sweet with each other in public, nor even in private, though Geralt _is_ sweeter than anyone might think. And in many ways, a romantic relationship with Geralt _is_ much like his previous relationship with the witcher.

But Jaskier has shown Geralt his favorite places from his years spent studying here. Secluded spots in the tower of the campus library, where he’s reminisced at length about favorite professors and the ones he could hardly tolerate. Bookshops tucked into back alleys, where he’s dug up love stories for Geralt to wave away, though Jaskier is allowed to whisper them in his ear at night. Gardens under moonlight, where he’s stolen kisses and sat down with his lute.

(“How many people have you brought here?” Geralt had asked in the garden, two nights ago.

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Jaskier had told him primly.

“You always kiss and tell.”

Jaskier had swatted his arm and then gone very quiet for several minutes before telling him, “Only you, if you must know. Everywhere I’ve shown you has been one of _my_ places.” And then, unable to bear the weight of Geralt’s expression for long, he’d added, “Also, fucking in the library sounds wretched. Can you imagine the paper cuts?”

Geralt had kissed him anyway.)

But Jaskier has allowed himself to be brought along to Oxenfurt’s premier livery, where Geralt has frowned at and “hmm”ed over any number of creatures that may as well be the same aside from their coloring and perhaps their height. He’s watched Geralt saddle and mount plenty of them, and been tossed onto several backs himself, possibly so Geralt can make sure they won’t throw him off, or more likely to give Geralt an excuse to lecture him yet again over riding like a sack of potatoes.

(“If you’re so determined for my posture to improve,” Jaskier had said following a dismount from a beast with the most uncomfortable trot he’s ever encountered, “I think I might need more riding practice.”

“I’ve told you that before,” Geralt had reminded him, and then noticed the smile on his face and snorted much like the horse whose reins he held.)

But Geralt has appeared in the back of lecture halls where Jaskier has taken the opportunity to give lectures, history his most frequent subject of choice. The witcher has watched him pace before the students (most of them quite eager to learn from a bard of his renown, though Aniyah has sat in and looked thoroughly unimpressed, but she has apologized for her crassness; he’s not brought himself to thank her for drawing his feelings to his own attention), covering wars and marriages and rulers with a great deal of animation.

(“Hello, Geralt,” Jaskier had greeted him one afternoon. “Have you come to see how you might improve your marks?”

Geralt had hauled him none-too-gently away.)

But they’ve fallen into bed again and again (else one of them has pushed or dragged the other into it), and in some ways Jaskier has never felt so alive. Certainly he’s never been so sated.

He thinks, sometimes, when they wake pressed together, when he lifts his head from that broad chest to find Geralt watching him sleep, that it still startles Geralt that Jaskier wants him, loves him fiercely in return. It’s irksome and it’s sweet, irritating and precious, but this is still new to both of them, and Geralt will get used to it eventually.

However many advances he refuses from others, though Drusilla seems to have done her best to ensure the city’s populace knows the bard Dandelion’s heart is spoken for. However many kisses it takes. However many times he has to say it.

Jaskier would be happy to stay in Oxenfurt a great deal longer, carrying on this way. But Geralt, for his part, has begun chomping at the bit to resume travel of late, no matter Jaskier pointing out they needn’t worry about money as long as they’re here. He knows perfectly well money’s not the point.

The point is Geralt’s a witcher.

The point is they’ve got to be on their way, eventually, and so they are today.

“I wonder,” he says conversationally, “if you could fuck me on horseback.”

Geralt’s tone, far from the intrigue Jaskier hoped for, is a firm, “We’re not doing that.”

“A pity.” Jaskier ponders for a moment. “I do tend to ride behind you. Supposing I slip a hand between your legs, then, and tease you without ever properly touching you, until I drive you so absolutely mad you have no choice but to stop and ravish me, hm?”

Geralt gives him an exasperated look and begins leading Roach toward the stableyard, where a bright-eyed woman, apparently accustomed to being up and about at this hellish hour, waits with the new gelding.

Jaskier pouts as he follows. “You’re no fun at all, White Wolf.”

“None?” Geralt pats Roach’s neck and says a mild, “You sounded like you were having fun with your legs over my shoulders last night.”

A shiver runs through Jaskier at the reminder.

“All right,” he allows. “You’re a little bit fun, on occasion.” He’s certainly more agreeable after a good romp, or at least not so _disagreeable_.

They reach the woman holding their gelding, and Geralt exchanges words with her that Jaskier doesn’t concern himself with. Instead he scratches Roach’s nose, making a face when she nudges him. “I haven’t got an apple for you, I’m afraid.” He glances at Geralt, who’s mounting up, and sidles toward the stirrup. “If I fall off this horse today—”

“I mean to leave you where you land,” Geralt says.

“You do _not_.”

Geralt “hmm”s noncommittally.

“Suppose I’ll have to find myself a new witcher, in that case,” Jaskier says, more to the mare than the man, “and what a pity. I’m just starting to get this one well-trained.” He allows a musing lilt into his voice. “I do hope the next one is half as good at—”

Geralt hauls him bodily onto Roach. “Do you ever stop talking?”

“You know I don’t, that’s why you like me.”

“I should have left you asleep,” Geralt says. “Roach would appreciate the lighter load.”

“We could easily get a third horse.” Jaskier indicates the livery, and then the gelding. “Or I could ride that one. It’s not out of the question.”

“No.”

Evidently it _is_ out of the question.

Jaskier smiles and slips one arm around Geralt’s hips, shifts his seat. “I thought not.” He pauses. “But just in case it does come up, that Vesemir you’re always mentioning, is he a handsome fellow?”

“He’s about two hundred years old.”

“Oh, so he’s younger than you?”

Geralt snorts and nudges Roach onward. The gelding moves to follow; Geralt must have spent the time here to train it while he was shaping young minds, as they say.

“Have we got a destination in mind,” Jaskier asks through a yawn, the sun only beginning to peek at the world as they leave the stableyard, “or are we following the monsters?”

“Following the monsters.”

“Oh, good.” Jaskier pushes thick white hair aside and rests his cheek on Geralt’s shoulder. “I love following the monsters.”

* * *

They travel east, in the general direction of Rinde, though whether they mean to stop there, Jaskier doesn’t ask. He doesn’t suppose it matters very much in the long run; they’re used to camping, the two of them, and in a practical sense, very little changes now they’re back on the road. During the day, Jaskier rides behind Geralt, and come evening they find a place to settle down. The only notable difference is how Jaskier often places himself in the witcher’s lap following their evening meals, how Geralt’s face does this funny little thing when he strums a love song, the way Geralt says his name to stop him wandering headlong into danger.

There are stops in every village and hamlet along the way, where Geralt asks if there’s any witcher’s work. Sometimes there is, be it ghouls or spriggans or more of those horrible Coccacidium wreaking havoc. Jaskier goes along for the work more often than not, just as he always has, though now he understands the way Geralt looks at him during attempts to leave him behind.

“I can’t tell the story properly if I don’t see it,” Jaskier reminds him every time.

“You don’t tell the stories properly when you do see them,” Geralt grouses.

“A little embellishment never hurt anybody.” Jaskier chases this with a kiss, and Geralt acquiesces, which is a delightful discovery to have made.

Still, Geralt makes sure there’s a dagger in Jaskier’s hand (though he doesn’t know the first thing about using it, and has pricked his own fingers on the tip any number of times), and refuses to let him near enough for a good look at the combat. Instead he mostly sees the scratches left in the aftermath and the guts that thankfully don’t belong to his witcher, and pesters Geralt for every possible detail.

There’s less trepidation in him when he’s along for the hunt, and when Geralt is killing things he’s killed a hundred times before.

Sometimes there isn’t any witcher’s work, and they keep moving, plenty of coin still to carry them through. Jaskier contributes plenty, of course, the people in these parts always enthusiastic for a performance from Dandelion. (Most of them would probably be enthusiastic for a performance from _any_ traveling troubadour, but Jaskier likes to think his name incites surfeits of gaiety.)

The earliest days of summer are upon them, afternoons growing hotter, but spring hasn’t been entirely cowed, and the mornings and evenings have stayed comfortable. They’ve been on the road from Oxenfurt perhaps two weeks when they ride, at dusk, into a village like any other, except that there’s nobody around.

“Maybe they’re having a party,” Jaskier says. “I’m sure I could finagle an invitation.”

“You’re not finagling anything.” Geralt presses Roach deeper into the village, which reveals itself to not be _entirely_ empty.

A curtain shifts in a window, a gap-toothed face ducking out of sight, and there’s a tavern alongside a barn, where a lanky man who can’t be older than twenty stands…guard, Jaskier supposes, doubtful he’s ever swung that sword at anything but a scarecrow. He straightens up at the sight of them, and as soon as Geralt’s halted Roach, Jaskier takes the opportunity to slide down from her back, wincing as he goes; he hadn’t missed all the time spent on horseback. He’s not made for it the way Geralt is.

“Where is everybody?” Jaskier says by way of greeting. “It’s somewhat early for everyone to be abed, I would think.”

The guardsman squints at him. “Hiding, aren’t they?”

“Hiding!” Jaskier grins up at Geralt. “Hiding is promising, don’t you think?” He turns his attention back to the guardsman, practically beaming at him. “Hiding from what? Have you got a ghoul problem? Geralt is excellent at ghouls. _Especially_ when there’s coin involved.”

Well, now he’s being looked at like he’s sprouted an additional head. “Sorry, what are you saying about ghouls?”

“Ignore him.” Geralt swings off of Roach’s back, does it much more gracefully than Jaskier. “Is there room for two horses?”

Jaskier does his best to help with the brushing and all, but he’s really more a hindrance, and Geralt eventually waves him off. In the eventually following that, they make it into the tavern itself, and if the people of this town are hiding, a number of them have evidently chosen to do it here. Quite a few eyes turn their direction as they enter.

“Hello,” Jaskier calls to a table of three men who assess him with some suspicion he doesn’t think he’s earned. Then again—he glances over his shoulder to find Geralt looking just as aloof as ever he has, so it’s a fair enough thing, isn’t it. “This is Geralt of Rivia, the famed White Wolf,” he needn’t look again to know what look is likely on Geralt’s face now, “and I’m Jaskier, though you likely know me better as Dandelion?”

The men are unmoved by his introduction, but they do look to Geralt with more interest. Their eyes are on his swords. One of them, a large man with an impressive beard that looks as though it may have belonged to a bear at some point in its history, says, “You’re a witcher?”

“I am,” Geralt agrees. His voice isn’t loud, but most of the ordinary tavern chatter has died away.

“You kill monsters,” the man goes on.

“I do.” Geralt approaches the table, Jaskier at his heels. “Do you have monsters for me?”

“Might be as we do,” the second man says. He’s reedier, likely a dyer of some sort with the way his hands are stained.

“And you can tell him all about it,” Jaskier says cheerfully, ignoring the prickling of apprehension at the back of his neck; he’ll feel better once he’s knows what Geralt’s to kill, or he’ll feel worse. “Over a hot meal.”

It’s nothing against venison and hare and whatever else Geralt has hunted and stripped and cooked for them on the way here, but Jaskier wants a proper dinner. Possibly a potato. Chairs are found for them and dishes of stew, and while the meal is by no means the best he’s ever had, it’s seasoned well enough, and there _is_ a potato.

“So,” Geralt says, fingers at his wolfshead medallion, “what is it you have here that calls for a witcher?”

“Spiders.” This comes from the larger man.

“Spiders,” Geralt echoes dubiously, while Jaskier stifles a laugh.

As amusing as the idea of Geralt being hired to squash a house spider is, he says, “I’m not sure you understand what a witcher is fo—”

“Big spiders,” the third man, with a thin, haggard face, clarifies.

“Oh,” Jaskier says, forcing his face to stay straight, “that does change everything, if they’re big spiders.”

Geralt kicks him under the table; he doesn’t blink.

“They took a goat,” says the reedier man, giving Jaskier a nasty look. “And a sheep.”

“And my Annie,” the haggard man says.

“Annie would be your?” Jaskier prompts.

“Daughter.” His fingers tremble around his fork. “Annie’s my daughter.”

“Oh.” Jaskier had been hoping for an oddly named dog, perhaps, or a pony.

“Where are these spiders?” Geralt asks, before Jaskier can go and put his foot in his mouth again. Probably for the best. He puts a hunk of good bread there instead.

“There are caves,” the reedy man says. “Half a day’s hike to the south. Used to be wolves lived there, but it’s just the spiders now. Don’t know if the wolves ran or if they ate ‘em.”

“And how long has this been a problem?’

The townsmen exchange glances, and quick muttered words, before the bearded one says, “A month, maybe a little more. Didn’t believe it at first, did we? Lacey’s girl came in screaming about it, but no spider’s that big, not a one of ‘em. Only there’s more than one.”

“How many?”

The reedy man thinks for a moment. “Dunno, three at least, maybe more.”

Geralt considers this. “Is there anything else near the village that’s strange? Magical?”

“There’s the wizard’s shack,” says the reedy man. “Mostly we left it alone, but used to be, kids’d dare each other to go inside, take a look, maybe come back with something small. That wizard’s been gone longer’n any of us have been around, was gone before my grandfather was born. Never seemed any harm in it.”

Geralt “hmm”s at this. It’s left to Jaskier to say, “Used to be?”

“We don’t let the kids out of town,” the bearish man says.

“Not since Annie,” says her father, and bursts into sobs.

Jaskier meets Geralt’s eyes in order to avoid looking at anybody else.

Geralt pushes his bowl away. “I’ll take care of your spiders tomorrow. Tonight, we need a room.”

As soon as they’ve made their way upstairs and are safely behind a closed door, Jaskier lets out a nervous laugh. “So,” he says, “spiders. Have you ever killed a spider with a sword, Geralt?”

“No.” Geralt’s already in the process of removing his leathers, setting them carefully aside for tomorrow. “I haven’t met one big enough to need the sword.”

“A spider big enough to steal a daughter,” Jaskier muses, abandoning his boots beside the door and then going to work on his shirt. “I assume we’ll be starting with this—what was it, the wizard’s shack? Not very impressive-sounding, is it. It’s no wizard’s tower or grotto or _anything_ better than shack.”

Geralt shoots him a look at the use of ‘we’ and Jaskier returns a ‘what of it?’ look of his own; he’s hardly going to allow himself to be left behind when there’s something _new_ to see, and it’s not like whatever beast was stalking Oxenfurt. He’s never liked spiders (who does? Yennefer, maybe, they’re as discomfiting as each other) but neither is he horrified by them. Perhaps he’ll change his mind on the morrow.

“Yeah,” Geralt says eventually. “See if I can get an idea where these things came from. Might be an escaped experiment, or…” He waves a broad hand to indicate the exceptional nonsense that is magic, that is chaos, that is children’s bedtime tales come to life.

Jaskier folds his shirt neatly before setting it down and doing the same with his trousers. “In the meantime,” he says, sitting on the edge of the sagging mattress, “we have a roof and a bed, and I’d like you to join me in it. If you think the poor thing is up to the job.”

Geralt allows Jaskier to pull him down, to kiss him, and though the bed in question has seen better days, it does manage to hold them up; Jaskier doesn’t suppose they can ask more of it than that.

* * *

They set off on foot early in the morning. Not so early as they’d left Oxenfurt, Geralt deciding he’d prefer to do his investigation when the sun has risen, but early enough that the streets of this town (does the place have a name, Jaskier wonders) are largely empty, aside from a yawning farmer and his sheepdog and the sheep themselves, presumably one fewer than they used to be; there’s also a drunkard staggering his way home.

Geralt’s swords are all tucked away, the silver and the steel and the extra short sword he keeps for whatever reason a man might need three swords when he hasn’t three arms, as well as the dagger. When he needs one, he’ll have it in hand; speed has never been a concern. Jaskier is unarmed, unless he means to throw Geralt’s pack at a spider and run. Everything in it is likely poisonous to anybody who isn’t a witcher, so it might not be an entirely fruitless case.

They’ve been walking for three hours—Geralt frequently pausing to sniff the air or investigate a patch of ground that looks, to Jaskier’s eye, like every other patch of ground—when Geralt holds up a hand and says, “Wait here a minute,” before disappearing between two tight-pressed trees. Jaskier scowls after him, but obediently stays put, leaning against the nearest oak tree and watching the space around him. If these spiders are as big as the townsfolk say, there’s not room enough between the trees for one of them to attack without him noticing its approach. He looks upward and winces; with luck he’d hear it crashing through the branches, but it’s fully possible one could drop in on him from above.

Geralt returns several uneventful minutes later, a leaf trapped in his hair, and says, “This way. Watch where you step.”

Jaskier follows him through the trees and finds himself deeply unimpressed. “Shack,” he decides, looking at the dilapidated structure in front of them, “was putting it generously. The wizard’s hut. The wizard’s lean-to, maybe.”

But for all the place is falling apart, the door is shut, not damaged by weather or petty children’s vandalism. Geralt shoulders it open with little effort.

Jaskier takes one step in after him and harumphs. Inside, the place is significantly wider, though the ceilings are still squat; it’s not nearly in the state of squalor he expected, though things have clearly been rifled through on occasion, pilfered as the townsfolk told them. One window has been smashed, but aside from that, the wizard might have been a somewhat messy fellow who left just yesterday. “That was misleading. An illusion?”

Geralt shakes his head. “More powerful. Something spatial.”

“Wonderful.” Jaskier eyes an immense cedar chest, lodged partway open with a heap of fabric caught spilling over the sides. “Powerful magic. My favorite kind.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Geralt tells him, and Jaskier holds up his hands to demonstrate they’re still empty. He’s not a _complete_ fool. Though there is a lovely silver and lapis lazuli pendant that catches his eye; he wonders that nobody has ever run off with it before. Afraid of the magic, probably.

The bookcase is the next thing to draw his eye next. It’s all askew, and some of the books have been damaged by squirrel teeth and the elements, presumably since the window was broken. There are titles here he’s seen in the Oxenfurt library, histories and scientific tomes and suchlike; and then there are the volumes he can’t makes heads or tails of.

His nose wrinkles at an unfortunate smell mingling with the woodsy air, and his eyes land on a rotting mouse corpse. He glances toward Geralt, meaning to comment on it—only to find the man swiping his finger through a blue, gleaming substance spilled across the floor, and sticking that finger in his mouth.

“Don’t touch anything,” Jaskier says with remarkable restraint. “You tell me not to touch anything and here you are _tasting_ who knows what?”

“It’s fine.” Geralt wipes the rest of the liquid off on an abandoned scrap of cloth that ought to have turned to dust ages ago, but has likely been protected by whatever magic is on this place. Actually—Jaskier steps closer and peers at it, finds it isn’t nearly so fine as the garments in the chest. Jaskier doesn’t pick it up, not with Geralt using it the way he just has, but he does frown at it.

“Is it fine?” Jaskier nudges the fabric with his foot and scowls at the witcher. “If you turn into a giant witcher, I don’t know what’s to be done with you.” He pauses, then opens his mouth again, but Geralt interrupts him with, “Is my cock not big enough for you already?”

Jaskier pats his arm. “More than enough, White Wolf. You’ve heard the song.”

Nobody else has; Geralt has forbade him to sing it within earshot of other people.

Geralt’s mouth twitches, and then his attention catches on something over Jaskier’s shoulder. He pushes Jaskier out of the way, his boots thunking hard on the floor as he crosses the room in two long strides, dagger gone from his side to his hand, and then the dagger is embedded in the floor: cut clean through a spider the size of Roach’s head.

“Oh, look,” Jaskier says dryly, “it’s a baby.”

It must have crawled out of the chest. The dagger comes free with an unpleasant squishing sound. Geralt wipes the blade clean on one of the garments before slipping it back into its sheath. Then he picks up one half of his eight-legged victim and examines its guts, which aren’t a thing Jaskier has ever thought about spiders having, but at that size, how can he not?

“If you intend to taste that too, I’m never kissing you again. I just want to make sure you know that.” Jaskier folds his arms across his chest.

“It’s the same,” Geralt says in place of an answer, bringing the limp thing nearer to his face for a good sniff; just watching him turns Jaskier’s stomach, but he’s spent years enough in the witcher’s company that he doesn’t lose his breakfast.

“The same as what?”

Geralt waves toward the puddle across the room.

“Right,” Jaskier says. He pauses, cocks his head to one side, and gives Geralt a painfully sweet smile. “So you didn’t have to lick the odd substance on the floor to put that together? Your sense of smell would have sufficed?”

Geralt doesn’t deign to give this a proper answer, either. Or any answer. He surveys the room anew, this time lingering over an empty tank of some sort. “If I had to guess,” he says, pointing to the substance on the floor, “a kid from the town smashed the vial. The wizard who abandoned this place was doing something with size, and left behind spiders he’d been altering with magic. They escaped their cage, probably the same day, and then broke their way out once they were big enough.”

“They said the wizard’s been gone for ages,” Jaskier protests. “How would his spiders still be alive?”

“Spiders he’d been altering with magic,” Geralt repeats.

“Goody. This just gets better and better. Now they’re magically altered giant spiders. To the spider-infested cave, then?”

* * *

To the spider-infested cave, indeed. It’s another hour’s hike to get there, and Jaskier decides it’s a good thing they departed so early in the morning, else the sun might have turned stifling by now, even beneath the shade of the trees. The cave mouth is veiled in a broken layer of web, and none of the surrounding trees have been spared the same treatment. Jaskier keeps his hands close to his sides. He is _not_ getting stuck in that. No thank you. He dreads to think what it might do to his clothes, which have suffered enough during their travels. The stains would never come out.

Here Geralt does draw his sword, the silver, and brushes the webs hanging over the entrance away. It’s impossible to see more than five or ten feet inside the cave, but the web is clearly thicker within, and Jaskier doesn’t relish the thought of going inside.

Geralt digs through his pack while Jaskier holds it and comes up with a tiny vial of liquid, which he unstops with his teeth, and swallows the contents.

“That the one that lets you see in the dark?”

“Yeah.” Geralt drops the empty vial back into the pack. He pushes his dagger into Jaskier’s hand. “Stay outside.”

Jaskier indicates the webs. “I think I’m safer with you and your blades, White Wolf.”

Geralt grunts, an unhappy sound, but he doesn’t say anything when Jaskier follows him inside. It’s not so dark as Jaskier feared it might be; good thing, as his eyes haven’t the benefit of witcher potions and he can hardly cling to Geralt at a time like this. Unfortunately, he’s quite sure the dim glow—just enough that he can follow the shape of Geralt, can make out large boulders and when there’s a bend in the path—is emanating from the webbing.

Neither of them speak as they proceed through the cave. Jaskier has no interest in breaking Geralt’s focus. He simply shifts the dagger from hand to hand, never comfortable with it in either. Probably he should ask Geralt to teach him to use it properly, but he wasn’t _made_ for fighting.

They come to a large, mostly open cavern that Jaskier doesn’t like at all. He edges as near to the wall as he dares, while Geralt moves cautiously forward, silver sword at the ready.

Jaskier takes another step forward, so focused on keeping track of Geralt that he doesn’t keep track of his feet until one of them lands in something squishy. Something with entirely too much give. He looks down and chokes, bile rising in his throat.

The thing he’s stepped in is, he supposes, the approximate size and shape of a young woman, her cheeks sunken halfway to nothing, the bulk of her wrapped and wrapped and wrapped in webs, but her insides are, as the current location of Jaskier’s foot would suggest, liquefied.

He covers his mouth, heaving, and stumbles back, or tries, but his foot is—stuck, _stuck_ inside the dead girl. “Geralt,” he says, “I think I’ve found poor Annie.”

Geralt turns, and it’s then the massive eight-legged shape drops from the ceiling. It stands large as a plow horse, with fangs the length of a man’s hand, and it’s _hissing_ , and it’s on Geralt, silver sword knocked loose from his hand. Geralt reaches for his steel, but the spider is faster, knocks him to the ground.

Jaskier yelps at the sight and slashes wildly about him. He makes contact with something large and hairy, and lets out a weak moan of horror as the second spider bears down on him.

Then there’s only darkness.

He wakes an interminable amount of time later, still in the dim web glow of the cave. His arms and legs are bound tight in place at his sides. He attempts to squirm, to move _something_ , but he can’t. His face is blessedly free, so he can breathe, if nothing else.

“Wonderful,” he mutters.

“Jaskier,” Geralt’s voice says from the left, and Jaskier would probably jump at the surprise, were he capable of that much movement. There’s his witcher, hung up on the wall some five feet away. “Are you all right?”

“Probably not. Why do you ask?”

“Did it _bite_ you?”

“I don’t think so? Some bits of me are numb, but I don’t feel bitten.” He’s not sure if he would prefer to have his foot buried in a dead woman’s liquid, husked corpse again, or be stuck to the wall the way he is now. “Have you got a plan to get us out of here?”

“Yeah,” Geralt says, and there’s a sound Jaskier thinks he should recognize, but can’t place. “They might be big as hell, but they’re still spiders. Spiders don’t think about taking weapons away. I have my steel. And…” There’s a grunt of exertion, the sound of feet landing on the cave floor, and then steps coming toward him. “Igni.”

 _That_ _’s_ what it was. The sound of flame summoned from Geralt’s palms.

Geralt cuts him down, and for a moment he sags, his limbs mostly gone to pins and needles from the tightness of the webs. He rubs at his wrist, when his fingers have tingled their way back into sensation, endeavoring to get the blood flowing again. “You know I hate to insult a host,” he says, “but this isn’t really the way I like to be bound. Where have the spiders gone?”

“Next room.” Geralt takes one step away. “They follow the vibrations on the webbing. You stay here.”

So Jaskier stays there. He can hear it, the sound of steel tearing through enormous spider bodies, turning them into enormous spider corpses. Somehow he thinks he can make do without the visual in this case. “Wolves and spiders,” he says to himself. “Claws and venomed fangs.”

He’ll toy with it later.

At the moment, however, Geralt is coming back to him, every dropped blade returned to its proper place. There’s a shiny object swinging from one fist and a jar full of…something decidedly unpleasant under the other arm.

“Are you collecting spider bits?” Jaskier demands.

“I want to see what I can do with their venom,” Geralt says, and Jaskier sighs.

“Of course you do.” He points to the shiny thing. “And that?”

“Was on Annie. I don’t think her parents need to see what was left.”

“No,” Jaskier agrees, shuddering at the thought.

* * *

If there is a celebration that day, Jaskier and Geralt aren’t a part of it. They wash up in the nearby stream after notifying the townsfolk their spider problem has been taken care of—Geralt makes no mention of the broken glass in the wizard’s shack, that it was likely the unintentional work of a child—and retire to their room for the remainder of the day. Tomorrow, they’ll return to the wizard’s, so Geralt can claim anything safe, and destroy the rest, but that’s tomorrow.

Geralt spends several hours cross-legged on the floor, doing something or other with the spider venom, while Jaskier curls up on the bed with a book he’d nipped out of the Oxenfurt library. It’s only in the evening that he sets the book aside, props himself up on an elbow, and says, “Did you have any plans to touch me tonight, or are you too busy with your new toys? I only ask because I’m growing bored and if you’re not interested I’m taking my lute downstairs.”

“Patience,” Geralt says.

“It’s run dry. I haven’t any left.”

Geralt makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “Let me put this away. Can you wait that long?”

“Nope.” Jaskier pops the _p_. “Take your time. I’ll just have to get started without you.”

That said, Jaskier shimmies out of his clothes, leaving them in a neat pile beside the discarded book, and settles against the pillows. Geralt has been working with his shirt off, which seems patently unsafe, but the view is certainly beneficial. He thinks of the way the bed creaked beneath them last night with every long thrust of Geralt’s hips, thinks of the way Geralt looks at him when he’s nude and spread out for the witcher’s pleasure, thinks of that cock slick with his saliva when he’s had his head between Geralt’s legs for a good long while, teasing him to the brink of orgasm; it doesn’t take more than the thinking to get him hard.

He wraps his fingers around the base of his cock and the first stroke is enjoyable, but not enough to justify the sound he makes. Anything to get Geralt in bed with him more quickly. The witcher twitches at the breathy moan, but he’s not turning around, so Jaskier continues to pump himself slowly, until the catch in his breath is a realer thing, and that’s when he forces himself to stop, to take a steadying breath, his eyes flicking from his witcher’s tense shoulders to his straining cock and back again.

“Geralt,” he says casually, fingers resting on his inner thigh, “would you mind passing me the oil? My hands just aren’t slippery enough.”

Glass clinks and Geralt swears, and Jaskier, for his part, laughs. He doesn’t stop until Geralt is on top of him, warm mouth covering his own to swallow the sound, and there’s the fabric of Geralt’s trousers a not-enough friction against him, and Geralt swallows the moan, too. Jaskier digs one hand into Geralt’s upper arm, his other pinned to the mattress, while Geralt’s hips roll. His own hips jerk up, and he breaks the kiss to ask, “How would you have me tonight?”

Geralt’s lips make their way to the juncture of Jaskier’s throat and shoulder, where there’s already a fading bruise from several nights ago. “Earlier,” he says into Jaskier’s skin.

“Hmm?”

“In the cave—”

“Are you trying to ruin the mood? Pardon the phrasing, but it is hard to stay hard with spiders on the brain.”

Geralt shifts, lifts himself up on both palms, and there’s caution in the way he looks down at Jaskier, which certainly piques his curiosity. “You said that wasn’t how you like to be bound. Do you—is that something you like?”

“Oh.” Jaskier tilts his head. “You liked that idea?”

There’s the minutest shift of Geralt’s head, like he’s afraid to admit it. “Have you done that many times?”

“Not terribly many.” Jaskier considers, for a moment, past lovers, but only for a moment. “There is some amount of trust in allowing a person to bind you, to relinquish control like that. I haven’t had many I was willing to try it with.” He leans up on his elbows, cups Geralt’s face in his palm. “Do you want to tie me up, White Wolf?”

Geralt presses a kiss to that palm, open-mouthed and wet. “If you’ll allow me to.”

Jaskier doesn’t laugh at him. The moment’s not right for it. Instead he draws the witcher into another kiss, murmurs, “Darling man,” against parted lips, and, “don’t you know you can do anything you like to me?” and Geralt’s breath stops for a moment; Jaskier waits, and waits a moment more, and doesn’t miss the relief in those yellow eyes as Geralt pulls back.

He presses at Geralt’s chest until the witcher’s sitting back on his heels, the outline of his cock straining beneath his trousers. Jaskier pats his hip and says, “Take these off, will you?” before slipping off of the bed and over to the travel pack where he’s stuffed everything that doesn’t have a better home. He rifles through until he comes up with several strips of cloth, likely from garments previously shredded to bind one wound or another; but these are clean, and he has another use in mind for them.

“Geralt,” he says, turning to find his request fulfilled, Geralt’s cock straining toward his belly, “do you mean to tie me to the bedposts, or…? How many of these do we need?”

“Just one.” Geralt crosses the room to join him, sets one hand light on Jaskier’s head.

“Just one,” Jaskier repeats, and stuffs all but two away, having something of his own agenda in mind. At the question in Geralt’s eyes, he drops one and holds the other in front of his eyes. “Would you tie this here?”

Geralt’s groan is a truly remarkable thing, and Jaskier regrets somewhat that he can’t fit it into song. “You’d let me—”

Jaskier doesn’t say, I want to be entirely in your hands, and he doesn’t say, I think you need this; he says, “For a man with such remarkable hearing you might be better at _listening_ , Geralt. I’m not _letting_ you do this.” He catches Geralt’s hand, presses the length of fabric into it. “I _want_ you to.”

Geralt doesn’t question it again, just steps behind Jaskier and ties the makeshift blindfold in place, and then Jaskier’s vision is only black, so he closes his eyes altogether.

For a moment, there’s only the sound of Geralt’s breathing, and his own. Finally though, there’s Geralt’s feet scuffing on the floor, the rustling of fabric, and Geralt’s hands at his wrists, pulling them together behind his back. The fabric winds around them, the knot not done up too tightly, and Geralt says, “Is that—”

“It’s fine,” Jaskier assures him. “I’ll tell you if I don’t like something.”

Geralt huffs out a breath through his nose, and though he can’t see, Jaskier smiles to reassure. There’s a hand at his shoulder then, pulling him fully up onto his knees, before moving to his chin, thumb tracing his lips before pressing between them. Jaskier nips at that thumb, and then it’s gone, replaced by the thick head of Geralt’s cock. He moans as Geralt presses, slow, slow, into his mouth, until his lips meet Geralt’s balls, and he swallows around him, the only natural thing to do, and way Geralt says his name reminds him of the holy services he’s sat through, only this worship makes his cock twitch, his hips rock forward into air.

He waits like that, to see if Geralt means to control the bobbing of his head, but Geralt only places a hand atop his head and says, “Go on, Dandelion.”

Jaskier doesn’t need to be told twice. He pulls back so only the head of Geralt’s cock remains in his mouth, so he can tongue at the slit and appreciate the burst of flavor on his tongue, before taking him to the root again. Geralt’s saying his name again, his voice low and catching, the hand on his head keeping him steady, every so often pressing down. Jaskier’s fingers flex behind his back. He wants to grab hold of Geralt’s thighs, his ass, wants to tease at the man’s balls, but there’ll be none of that tonight. There’s naught for him to do but moan obscenely around the cock in his mouth, saliva and precome blending to make it so, so easy. His own cock is dripping, twitching, in need of touching.

The tightening of the fingers in his hair tells him Geralt is close. He sweeps his tongue full along the underside, wanting Geralt as deep in his throat as he can be, and he’s rewarded for his effort with Geralt spilling over the back of his tongue. Despite best efforts, seed spills over onto his lips; he chases it with his tongue as Geralt pulls his cock from his mouth.

“Well,” he says, leaning his head forward and finding Geralt’s thigh there, “that was good, wasn’t it?”

“We’re not done.” Geralt’s hand stills in his hair, as though he expects Jaskier to protest.

Jaskier only says, “I should hope not. If you leave me hard I’ll be very cross with you.”

Geralt pulls him onto his feet, and his knees ache a little, but he doesn’t mean to mention it. He assumes, correctly, that he’s being led to the bed, where Geralt positions him with his ass in the air, his knees spread wide, entrance exposed. At this angle he can’t rut against the bed to take the edge off, and he’s sure that was intentional. He rests his cheek on the pillow while Geralt runs a hand up between his legs, wraps a hand around him for a single stroke of his cock.

“Tease,” he breathes, and Geralt laughs, tickling warm on Jaskier’s ass.

He can hear it, when Geralt opens their oil, and then there’s a blunt finger tracing his hole, dipping just inside and staying like that without pushing further inside.

Jaskier wiggles his ass as well as he can like this, which does little to get that finger in _deeper_ , the way he needs it, but when he says a frustrated, “ _Geralt_ ,” the witcher pushes, massaging as he goes. He presses a kiss to Jaskier’s hip when he adds a second finger, both of them slipping inside with ease, and by the time there’s a third, Jaskier is gasping, just this side of begging for Geralt’s cock.

Geralt, the dear, doesn’t make him beg for it. He rearranges them so Jaskier is straddling his hips, his cock dripping onto Geralt’s stomach, and he wishes he could _see_ that, but he doesn’t wish it enough to ask Geralt to take the blindfold away. His memory will serve, for now.

Hands settle on his hips, holding him in place for one, two, three seconds before pulling him down in one smooth thrust that has Jaskier gasping. He might topple forward, if not for those hands on his hips.

“I want you to fuck yourself like this,” Geralt says, his voice strained, and Jaskier’s hardly going to deny him a thing like that.

He lifts onto his knees and comes down again. It takes him a moment to set a pace that’s enough, all shallow bouncing, up and down, and up and down, and the angle’s not right for Geralt’s cock to find his prostate every time, but when he does Jaskier positively cries out for it. The fourth time that happens, Geralt’s hold on his hips changes, fingers going tighter, and then he’s not the one moving, Geralt is, fucking up into Jaskier with hard, perfect thrusts.

Jaskier can’t hold himself up this way, and when he slips forward Geralt is there with a kiss, licking into Jaskier’s mouth. Jaskier’s cock is trapped between them, slicking skin with precome, and Jaskier thinks he might have said Geralt’s name a few times, but the only sounds he's making are desperate, unformed things, little more than breaths panting into Geralt’s mouth.

There’s no warning before Geralt sits them both up, one of those hands finding Jaskier’s curled fingers, the other on his waist. Sweat drips from Jaskier’s hair, and the blindfold slips from its place, and all it takes is the look on Geralt’s face to push him into orgasm, Geralt’s cock buried in his ass. Those hips keep rolling, but Geralt yanks the knot binding Jaskier’s wrists loose, and Jaskier’s arms fly around Geralt’s neck, giving him the leverage to fuck down onto him.

“Fuck,” he moans, his lips just beneath Geralt’s ear when the witcher comes a second time, filling him up with it. “ _Geralt_.”

Geralt eases them down, keeping Jaskier atop him and not slipping out until his back’s against the pillows. He slips a finger beneath the blindfold and pulls it away to drop beside their clothing. Jaskier has no interest in moving, ever, but Geralt, the responsible bastard, presses him onto his back and slips out of bed.

They’ve a pitcher of water, and Jaskier makes an unhappy sound at the thought of that on his skin after the heat of Geralt’s body. “If you can free yourself like earlier, surely you can warm that.”

“That’s not what the signs are for,” Geralt says, but makes use of igni anyway, and the cloth on his skin a moment later is perfectly comfortable.

Once they’re rearranged in bed, Jaskier tracing patterns on Geralt’s stomach where his come splattered so nicely, he says, “Did you like that?” When Geralt doesn’t say anything, he looks up to find the man watching him. “Are you all right? We haven’t got to do it again, if you didn’t—”

Geralt kisses him, and says, “Thank you,” and Jaskier can count the times Geralt has thanked him for anything on one hand.

“You haven’t thanked me the other times we’ve had sex,” Jaskier remarks. “I would remember that.”

Geralt captures his fingers, brings them up to his mouth. “For trusting me, Jaskier.”

Jaskier’s forehead crinkles. “Of course I trust you.”

“There’s a difference between trusting me to save your life,” Geralt says, “and putting yourself in my hands like that. Trusting me not to hurt you.”

Jaskier wants to sigh. Instead he slings a leg over Geralt’s body and goes up on his knees again, goes in for a thorough kiss. “I know you won’t hurt me, I’ve always known that, you oaf.” He pauses. “I suppose you did put your fist in my gut just after we met.”

“You deserved that,” Geralt says, and Jaskier flops down beside him again. “And it didn’t put you off.”

“You also kicked me last night,” Jaskier muses. “But I know you’d never _really_ hurt me.”

“I’ve been tempted a few times.”

“Sure you have.” Jaskier pats his thigh, then looks him full in the eye. “You were never the Butcher of Blaviken to me, Geralt. You were just a man brooding in a tavern, clearly in need of a—well, me.”

“Was I?”

“Yup. Lucky for you, there I was.”

“Lucky me,” Geralt says, and his tone is dry, but Jaskier’s not always an idiot.

There’s silence for a moment before Jaskier breaks it with, “Imagine if it had been chipmunks that got into that stuff.”

“Imagine if it had been a wolf.”

“My idea was much cuter.” Jaskier blows out a breath. “Also, a wolf did get into it, and next he means to ingest spider venom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: light bondage, spiders, (not at the same time)
> 
> Several things!
> 
> Thing 1: Until stated otherwise, this fic exists in a perpetual state of done and also not done. That is, I'm hoping to add to it roughly once a month, but it can always be read as finished. 
> 
> Thing 2: If there's anything you'd like to see here, feel free to let me know! I've got plenty of material in mind, but I also like to satisfy requests (be they smutty, be they story-related...)!
> 
> Thing 3: If you've left a comment and I haven't replied to it yet, know that I do adore you. (Just, comment catch-up is its own brain space.)


	4. of scars and stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let us not discuss how many times I rewrote this chapter before realizing I was telling the wrong story altogether. (But it was at least 5.)

_the hours rise up putting off stars and it is  
dawn_   
_into the street of the sky light walks scattering poems_

E.E. Cummings

They come to Rinde, eventually.

They’ve been winding their way here since departing Oxenfurt. Jaskier has known it perfectly well and thought little enough of it. Rinde is only a city after all, if a city in which they’ve had some…unique experiences. This isn’t their first time back to the place since the djinn and Jaskier’s near death and some unfortunate property destruction; perhaps this is why he hadn’t anticipated the flood of emotion that catches him like a slap to the face in the early-morning half-light. His arms tighten around Geralt’s middle as they pass through the gate.

This is not their first return to Rinde, no; but the last time they were here, he didn’t know—he didn’t know a lot of things.

_It was the djinn,_ Geralt had said. _That was when I knew._

Jaskier should have known, too. Should have found it in that tugging feeling in his chest that sent him looking for Geralt after a too-long period apart, or in the warmth that heated his chest when he won the witcher’s smile, or in the misery that set in later, whenever their paths crossed with Yennefer of Vengerberg’s.

“You’re quiet,” Geralt says, his own voice as low a rumble as ever. He’s scanning the street around him, likely for unfriendly faces; he may not have been given the old ‘never come back’ spiel here, but that doesn’t mean they’re all wildly fond of him. Someone always ends up spitting at him before they go.

“Am I?” Jaskier regrets how half-hearted he sounds. “Must be all the times you’ve told me to shut up finally sinking in.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No.” Jaskier pauses. Nothing _is_ wrong, not the way Geralt means it. It’s just not altogether right, either. “No, nothing is…I was just thinking I love you. That’s all.”

Geralt doesn’t say anything, at first. They’re riding along one of Rinde’s foremost streets, but then Geralt nudges Roach down another lane, the dappled beast—recently dubbed Compass by Jaskier, largely to stop Geralt calling it ‘also Roach’ or ‘Roach the grey’ or any such—ambling placidly after them. There’s an inn called the Goldenmane a little along the way, where the innkeep, no friend to the pawnbroker Geralt gave a good kick, treats the witcher better than most.

“You don’t have to think about it that way,” Geralt says, finally, when they’ve reached the innyard and Jaskier thinks he’s let it go. “I haven’t.”

“Fancy yourself a mindreader?” Jaskier reaches for light-hearted, scoffing, and lands nearer to pained. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Jaskier.” Geralt catches him around the forearm before he manages to slide from Roach’s back.

“Yes, darling?”

“You do know.”

Jaskier sets his own hand over Geralt’s to ease him off. “I might,” he concedes. “And I’ll decide how I want to think about it, shall I?” He brings Geralt’s hand to his mouth, kisses his fingers despite the taste of leather, and escapes the mare’s back before Geralt decides to stop him again. The last thing he wants is to become embroiled in conversation on horseback so close to leaving it.

There’s a visit to Bella and Selene, the innkeep and her jack-of-all-trades employee, and the abandoning of their belongings in a room, and the stabling of the horses, throughout which Jaskier leans against a wall, absently strumming on his lute and watching Geralt work and trying very hard not to think about the past, because that’s the thing, isn’t it? How he wants to think about it is not at all. Much better to think about _now_.

After that it’s into the market for some long-awaited errands. The former apothecary had gone from Rinde some time ago—evidently too ashamed to remain after half his street paid incident to his belt-thrashing—and been replaced by one with no feelings either way toward witchers (or sorceresses, to Jaskier’s understanding), so long as their coin was good. Geralt stocks up on several herbs he’s run low on—vile things, to Jaskier’s senses, but Geralt has need of them—before they move along to a farrier, where the woman agrees to come and have a look at Roach and Compass’ feet later in the afternoon.

From there, they’ve an entire day laid out before them and few things with which to fill it, so Jaskier sets himself to coaxing Geralt deeper into the market.

“Come on,” he says with a nudge that’s more an excuse for touch than anything else, though the hard, somewhat bemused set of Geralt’s mouth is a bonus. “We might find something worthwhile. You never know what people might have for sale in a city this size.”

Also, Rinde is the first city large enough to bother with trying to sell the finer scavengings from that wizard’s shack—the necklaces and rings Geralt declared free of magic and safe to trade away to anybody, as well as an enchanted amulet or two that call for the _right_ buyer—if they want sums near the value of the things.

“I should be looking for work,” Geralt says.

“And what better place?” Jaskier makes a wide gesture toward the crowd. “If anyone has beasties in need of witchering, they’ll be talking about it here and you know it. Besides,” he lets a bit of wheedling into his voice, “I’ve sacrificed _two_ shirts for the sake of your bloody wounds since Oxenfurt, and they need replacing.”

“I’ll try to keep my bleeding to myself in the future,” Geralt says dryly, before pointing out (no less dry) that, “You can handle your shirts on your own.”

Jaskier gives him the most tragic look he can muster (which is, of course, remarkably tragic; he’s spent a deal of time perfecting that look, as it helps with both persuading Geralt and his more mournful ballads), and says, “But I would rather handle them with you,” and Geralt breathes out through his nose in a way that tells Jaskier he’s won. He furnishes Geralt with a grin and remarks, “I don’t want to leave you unsupervised in this city, anyway. You might take somebody over your knee this time for all I know.” _That_ _’s it, Jask. Make it a laugh._ He considers. “I wouldn’t mind so much if it were me.”

The answering heat in Geralt’s eyes nearly makes Jaskier change his mind and drag Geralt back to the inn, but he does pull him into the market streets, and there’s less conversation after that.

The marketplace in Rinde is a great, bustling thing it would be easy to get lost in. Jaskier, having done so once or twice in the past, knows from experience. This morning, however, he travels in Geralt’s wake, because the thing about his witcher is, even when people don’t like him (which is almost always), they do tend to clear paths for him. Jaskier’s spirits rise with the sun’s progress overhead. The peace of the road is nice and all—when it’s not taken up with slavering, shrieking, clawing beasts all ravenous for human flesh and what-have-you—but cities feel so _alive_ , and they make him feel it, too.

It also distracts him from thinking too much about djinn and sorceresses and things that might have been avoided if he’d just fucking—all right, so the city isn’t a _complete_ distraction.

Shirts are purchased—his favorite a deep shade of red, like a good, rich wine, not least because Geralt’s eyes hadn’t left him when he put it on—and left behind for additional tailoring, and a number of things sold off, and Jaskier hasn’t settled on their next destination, content to soak in the tides of people for a little while.

He winks at a pretty young thing selling equally pretty apples, and flips her a coin as he swipes two of them. Her cheeks turn apple-blush pink; Jaskier supposes she could hardly sell anything else. Geralt, without turning round, says, “Stop flirting with the locals.”

“I’m not flirting,” Jaskier says patiently; he’d link his arm through Geralt’s to make a point, but the man doesn’t look half so menacing with Jaskier attached to him and beaming about at everything, and he likes it when Geralt looks menacing. People are more like to leave him alone. “I’m being friendly.”

“They’re the same thing with you.”

“They are not.” Jaskier’s protest is prim, unruffled. He slips the apples into the bag he’s carrying. “You know what it looks like when I flirt. Anymore it ends with—”

“There are children, Jaskier.” Geralt indicates, specifically, a girl of perhaps eleven, playing with dolls while her mother hawks rather fine jewelry; she couldn’t possibly hear a word they’re saying, unless she’s secretly a very small witcher.

“So there are!” Jaskier exclaims as though he hadn’t noticed, and leaves off with a pat to Geralt’s arm. “I do love your observational skills.”

Geralt snorts.

It’s then that a man approaches the stall, a coin purse tucked into his hands, which seems ill-advised. The majority of their own funds are under Geralt’s stewardship; the look of him hardly invites thieves, unless they’re incredibly stupid ones, and those deserve what they get. Jaskier has watched Geralt handle several simply by sticking a foot out.

This man has made an attempt at combing his hair, curly and colored like healthy wheat; there’s a bashful, nervous energy to his countenance, and Jaskier feels he could walk away right now, satisfied in the knowledge the man is buying something for his sweetheart. But he doesn’t walk away, lingering instead to watch him carefully select a delicate golden chain with a pale green garnet hung at one end and then count out the coins for it following a brief, not very well-haggled but evidently-merciful exchange with the woman.

It’s only when the young man is walking away with his prize that Jaskier says, “I would swear I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

“One of your adoring fans,” Geralt deadpans.

“Do you know,” Jaskier weighs this for a moment, “I think that might be it.”

“Do you want to go after him and ask if he wants you to write him a poem?” Geralt’s expression is unwavering, and Jaskier gives him a little shove, not that Geralt gives so much as an inch, which really would be polite of him.

“I might ask if he’d like a private performance,” Jaskier says seriously, and turns as though to go after the man, only for Geralt’s fingers to lock around his wrist and pull him in close. He makes no attempt to extricate himself from Geralt’s hold, but relaxes against him. A good thing they’re at the edge of the street, as out of the way as they can be. “Silly me. I forgot you prefer to keep all of the private performances to yourself. You’re a terribly selfish man, darling.”

Geralt’s breath is warm on the side of his head. “It’s not a performance I want.”

“I can’t grasp what else you might mean, you impenetrable man.” Jaskier chooses his words with care, as though this too is a song; his voice is utterly free of laughter, laced instead with puzzlement. “I’m a musician, you know. Performing’s the whole point of me. You might have noticed by now.”

“Is that so?” Geralt turns Jaskier to face him, and Jaskier readies himself for a kiss that doesn’t come; there’s only Geralt’s thumb brushing his chin and, “You have a few more uses than that.”

“Oh, do I?” Jaskier leans in nearer, not caring a whit that they’re on the street, in plain sight of anyone who cares to look. “You should tell me what they are.”

“Children,” Geralt reminds him, and Jaskier furrows his brow.

“Children? Geralt, I’m afraid I haven’t the hips for childbearing, nor a few other rather essential—”

Geralt laughs, and Jaskier meets it with a grin, and darts in for a kiss before he glances toward the little girl again, now representative of her entire species. His eyes wander from girl to mother to jewelry, his thoughts from children to childbearing to Yennefer, and he sighs his most wistful, distracts himself on, “You never buy me anything nice, you know.”

“I buy you rooms to sleep in,” Geralt grouses, “and a horse to carry your clothes, and all your meals.”

“I contribute as much as you do to the rooms and the meals, that hardly counts.” Jaskier rolls his eyes. “And we both know Compass was for your own benefit. I said you never buy me anything _nice_.”

Geralt gives him a long, concentrated look that very nearly makes him squirm, like he’s being read same as a book, and then carries on down the packed street. Jaskier sighs, and follows. It’s not that he wants finery—though he wouldn’t say no to it, what sort of bard would he be—but Geralt really has no sense of romance, and it does pain Jaskier to admit it. It would be nice to be swept off his feet, or to be surprised with something sweet, rather than to have another drowner head plunked down in front of him, still bleeding water and black murk.

But the man he loves is a witcher, so he supposes he’d best ready himself for a great many more drowner heads.

“Stop!”

The shout from ahead draws him from his thoughts. Jaskier isn’t surprised it’s come from the young man so recently purchasing gold. There’s another man, this one older and scruffier, duck-dodging his way through the market, having clearly made off with what coin the man had remaining to him, and probably the necklace too. It’s a shame, but not unexpected, the brazen, foolhardy way he’d been carrying his things.

More surprising is when Geralt pushes through the crowd after the second man. He swipes a metal weight from a swordsmith’s table as he goes, ignoring the outraged shout from the smith herself; Jaskier says a cheerful, “This is why nobody likes him, you know,” drops a few coins onto her counter to make up for the affront, and trots after his witcher anew.

Geralt heaves the weight over the heads of the crowd. He’s as accurate with that as he is a blade, and Jaskier supposes, as he watches it fly in an admirable arc, that it’s all steel, isn’t it; the weight slams into the fleeing thief’s shoulder, toppling him. The young man catches up and retrieves his pilfered belongings before looking about to find his savior.

His eyes find Geralt. Jaskier knows the moment he spots the wolfshead witcher medallion, because those eyes go wide; luckily it looks nearer to awe than it does to fear or mistrust or any of the other unpleasantries people often turn Geralt’s way owing to the work he does.

“Witcher,” he’s saying when Jaskier catches up, half-stammering it, “thank you for your help. If you’d like payment, I don’t have much left, but I—”

“It’s no trouble.” Jaskier neatly inserts himself into the interaction. “You’ve given him some entertainment for the morning. He can always use that. You’ve got to keep witchers well-exercised, you know. They’re exhausting if you don’t let them out to run. They start climbing walls, digging holes in the yard, it’s horrible.”

The young man stares at _him_ , then, those eyes gone wider yet. “You,” he says, “you’re Dandelion.”

Jaskier grins at him and delivers a flourishing bow. “I am indeed!” he says, ignoring the way Geralt sighs; he’s well practiced at that, too. “And you are?”

“My name’s Tuomas,” the man says, his cheeks pinking. “Will you be performing tonight, Master Dandelion? I saw you here in Rinde, it must have been two years ago now, but I’m in the city so rarely I never thought I’d be lucky enough to see you again.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says, because he hadn’t much thought about it yet, distracted as he’s been with the shopping and his thoughts doing their best to run away from him. “I’ll be playing at the Goldenmane, certainly, if Bella can be persuaded.” His smile tilts, wicked from eyes to the curve of his mouth, toward Geralt. “She does like the one about the pawnbroker.”

“Bella,” Geralt says, shifting to press heavier on the would-be thief’s back and so putting a stop to his efforts at returning to his feet, “is going to smack you with a broom if you make a mess of her common room again.”

Jaskier waves this off; it wasn’t his fault, all those spilled drinks last time. “You’d protect me from the terrors of the broom, I’m sure.”

“It’s your risk to take,” Geralt says, noncommittal.

Jaskier laughs, and before he’s replied, a city guard arrives; he refrains from commenting on the absolute diligence of the guards here. It’ll only create trouble for Geralt, and he’s more interesting things to do with Geralt than get him into unnecessary trouble.

In Rinde.

Again.

Jaskier shoves the thought bodily away.

“You’ll have to excuse us,” he says to Tuomas, “we’ve errands left to run, but do come see me at the Goldenmane.”

Tuomas nods, mumbling something about how he’s staying at the Goldenmane as well, isn’t that a coincidence, and then it’s back out into the crowds.

“Geralt,” he says in a tone of absolute glee, “he really _was_ one of my adoring fans.”

“I noticed.” Geralt catches him by the wrist to navigate around a precarious balancing of turnips. “Just what we needed.”

“Not to worry.” Jaskier gives Geralt’s arm an encouraging pat. “I’m _your_ adoring fan.”

Geralt ignores the comment, just says, “And what errands do you have left?” with more resignation in it than irritation.

Jaskier smiles broadly at him. “I’m so glad you asked. We’ve got to stock up on oil, mostly. We’re getting _quite_ low,” as if they’ve gone a night without fucking since they came to this, Jaskier cannot think of it; he pitches his voice low so only Geralt’s sensitive ears can possibly hear him, “and I assume you mean to fuck me into our very nice mattress tonight. If that’s not what you had in mind, _I_ certainly mean to take advantage of the very nice mattress while we’ve got it, before it’s back to rocks bruising my spine every night.” He leans up and touches his lips to the bottom of Geralt’s ear. “You’re awfully handsome when you obviously want to pull me into an alley and fuck me, you know, and I’ll let you, just as soon as we’ve picked up that oil.”

And then he drags Geralt along behind him, going on smiling at everything around them.

Come evening, Geralt hasn’t pulled him into an alley for a filthy fuck against a shop wall, which is unfortunate, but Jaskier _has_ given Bella his best smile and promised her the one about the pawnbroker and in return she’s promised not to wallop him with a broom unless he _really_ deserves it, and that’s better. He’s just finished his fourth song of the evening, a rousing sort of number, and is stepping away for a moment’s respite when he catches sight of Tuomas, sat at a table with a handful of other people. Their eyes meet for a moment, and Jaskier beckons, and a minute later Tuomas is sliding into a seat across the table from Jaskier and Geralt.

“Can I buy you a drink,” he says without preamble, “as a thank you for earlier?”

“By all means.” Jaskier gestures, and calls out to Selene, currently occupied behind the bar. She meets him with a rude gesture. “That means she’ll be a minute or two,” he says in a cheerful, confidential sort of way.

“Do you come here frequently then?” Tuomas seems surprised. “To know her so well?”

“No more often than anywhere else,” Geralt says.

“It’s always on the move with this one.” Jaskier indicates Geralt, unnecessarily; but he likes indicating Geralt. “You do learn to remember people, if you want a warm welcome when you see them again. Selene, of course, doesn’t believe in warm welcomes, and she gets that from Bella. Lucky thing they’re both excellent cooks, or I don’t know how the Goldenmane would manage to stay in business. Suppose they’d still have the excellent beds.

“Now then,” he carries on before he can get think too much about those beds, absently rapping his knuckles against the table, “where is it you’re from?”

“A town to the north of here,” Tuomas says, sheepish, like it’s the sort of thing one needs _admit_ to. “You wouldn’t know the name.”

Jaskier thinks he knows the names of most places, having grown intimately familiar with Oxenfurt’s geography texts, but he doesn’t say so.

“There are a few of us down.” Tuomas waves to the table where he’d been sitting before. “We’re here to take care of some things before our flower faire begins. It’s several days from now. You should come, if you’ve the interest.”

“I’m always interested in a good faire.” Jaskier arches an eyebrow. “Is yours a good faire?”

Tuomas nods an eager nod, and his next words burst with pride. “It’s the greatest faire in all Redania.”

“That is quite the claim.” Jaskier clucks his tongue. He leans forward, elbows on the table, and says, serious as you please, “If this is a flower faire, do tell me, have you got dandelions?”

“Dandelions are more of a weed than a real flower,” Geralt says, at which Jaskier holds a hand to his collarbone and lets his lips part.

“You wound me,” he says.

“I think you’ll heal.”

Jaskier snorts. He lingers long enough for Selene to bring their round of drinks before returning to his music—he’s yet to play Bella her song, after all—and it isn’t until rather late that he and Geralt make their way upstairs to their room, Jaskier still humming a little, the music not yet gone out of him. He leaves his lute on the plush chair that occupies the corner, and meanders along to the window, fingers tracing notches in the walls.

There’s a drizzling of rainfall outside, but that doesn’t stop him from pushing the window up and sticking his head outside. The rain is cool against his skin, a welcome soothe after the heat of all the bodies gathered in the common room. It had been quite a good performance, resulting in an admirable jingling of coins, which Geralt puts away while Jaskier stands at the window, letting the rain wash over him.

“Something on your mind?” Geralt asks, having come up silently behind him; Jaskier used to jump when he did that sort of thing, but not for a long time now.

He only presses back against him and says, “Only that it wasn’t very nice of you, calling me a weed. I think you owe me an apology.”

“Do you now?” Geralt’s hands encompass his hips, and Jaskier wishes he’d thought to strip down before this. “What kind of apology do you expect?”

“I’m sure you can come up with something.” Jaskier turns and sets his hands on Geralt’s shoulders, and Geralt lifts him like he weighs nothing at all. “You’re a clever man, aren’t you?”

“Clever enough for an apology,” Geralt says, carrying him to the bed before dropping him. He’s just landed when the witcher is on top of him, hands warm and seemingly everywhere, relieving Jaskier of his clothing like it’s become second nature, and that thought is enough to make him whimper. One of those hands massages Jaskier’s thigh, presses his leg to stretch out. “That Tuomas…”

“Seems an amiable fellow.” Jaskier huffs out through his nose. “Why are we talking about him?”

“He was looking at you like he wanted to eat you.” Geralt’s tongue flicks over his earlobe and he grasps blindly at the man, finding a clothed shoulder and making a dissatisfied sound.

“Was he?” Jaskier squirms, tugging at the hem of Geralt’s shirt. “I didn’t notice.”

“You always notice.” Geralt pulls Jaskier’s earlobe between his teeth, resulting in a full-body shiver.

“Lots of people look at me like they want to eat me. It’s good for people to look at a bard that way. They pay more if they’re thinking of fucking me, you know.” Jaskier arches a little, trying to get Geralt’s hand onto his hardening cock, but Geralt may as well have forgotten Jaskier has a cock at all, for all he takes the hint. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

“What do I have to be jealous of?” Geralt’s attention shifts to his neck, kissing and licking before his teeth find the hollow of Jaskier’s throat; his voice is a rasp on, “I’m the one who does eat you,” and Jaskier’s cock jumps.

“I think you’ve taken this White Wolf business a bit more literally than I meant i— _Geralt_.” Jaskier’s voice pitches higher when teeth dig into the juncture of throat and shoulder, only to give way to a moan.

Geralt’s hands are squeezing his ass, spreading him wide, the pad of one finger dragging dry over him without any hint that pressing inside has even crossed his mind. He goes on like that, only teasing and sucking marks into Jaskier’s shoulder and throat and chest, until Jaskier has become a trembling mess, words fallen entirely by the wayside. His own hands are in Geralt’s hair, alternately combing through and curling into fists, and finally, _finally_ Geralt takes that pressure as instruction, kissing and sucking and biting his way down Jaskier’s stomach, his thighs, to Jaskier’s dripping cock.

When Geralt properly swallows him, Jaskier shouts, not caring to muffle the sound.

“Geralt,” he nearly whines, the witcher’s tongue on the underside of his cock, and the sound Geralt makes around him is a growl, and Jaskier thinks he might come from that alone. The tip of Geralt’s thumb presses inside him and he makes a desperate sound, at which Geralt’s hand retreats, but not for long. When Geralt’s fingers press into him, two at once, they’re wet with oil, and Jaskier twists his hips down to meet them. There’s no rhythm to it at all, only a mindless, desperate need for Geralt’s touch, for the heat of his mouth and the stretching, pressing weight of his fingers.

He comes with Geralt’s name on his lips, exploding into Geralt’s mouth, and Geralt’s tongue still licks at him even as his fingers ease out.

“There’s that smile,” Jaskier murmurs when Geralt does lift his head, his lips red and wet. “Come here, will you?” And Geralt does, and Jaskier kisses him slow and sweet before he says, a playful smile quirking his lips, “So you’re saying Tuomas wanted to do that to me? Do you think I should let him? I’m sure Bella can tell me where his room—”

Geralt pins him to the bed with an answering growl, and Jaskier laughs in delight. It isn’t until after, when Geralt has fucked him through a second, dizzying orgasm and there’s seed leaking down the back of his thigh and he really can’t bring himself to care about the future discomfort, that Jaskier wonders if this was as good for Geralt as fucking a sorceress in the wreckage of a djinn-destroyed mansion on a granted-wish high. He tells himself it doesn’t matter, and presses himself closer to Geralt, whose hands are stroking up and down his back, soothing his way toward sleep.

* * *

Jaskier wakes slowly, pulling himself from a dream of the djinn, of the searing pain cut through his throat the way he imagines a blade might do, and of himself waking in Yennefer’s bed. She’d been beautiful, and he might have liked to have found himself in her bed, if she weren’t also terrifying, and looking at him with a sort of hunger than had nothing to do with sex. But today he wakes in an inn-bed with a still-sleeping Geralt beneath him, his head pillowed on his witcher’s chest, and he takes a moment to run a hand along Geralt’s bicep.

On the road, Geralt is always awake well before Jaskier, keeping an eye and ear—and nose, probably—on their surroundings even as he’s holding Jaskier close to him, but when they’re safe within a city or town, Jaskier has found that he’s regularly the first to wake. His fingers don’t wander any lower this morning; he only looks, finds himself thinking that Yennefer has shared this too, and it isn’t exactly jealousy that squeezes around his lungs and heart, but something else, something he hasn’t got a name for, no matter the books he’s read.

He touches a kiss to Geralt’s jawline, his fingertips dragging down Geralt’s throat, to the medallion that had never come off through last night’s activities. He leaves them there a moment, resting idle on the wolfshead, before sitting up and easing himself off the bed.

There’s the lightest whispering of fabric as he dresses. He’s quiet as he can manage in fetching his pack, though Geralt can undoubtedly hear him anyway. But his witcher doesn’t come after him as he slips out of the room. He steals down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he finds Bella at the stove and Selene at the counter. He offers a bow to each of them in turn before making off with a dish of oatmeal for himself.

From there he goes into the empty stables. Empty of people, that is. The groom is likely dozing in the loft, and there’s nobody else about. Roach and Compass are in adjacent stalls; their ears prick forward at the sound of footsteps, though Roach loses all interest when she finds he’s not Geralt. Compass though, whickers softly and bobs his head a bit, and Jaskier doesn’t understand horses half so well as Geralt does, but he takes that as a positive.

“See,” he says to Roach, leaving his dish on a bale of hay, “that’s how you’re meant to greet the man who’s brought you a gift.”

He fetches the first apple from his bag and offers it to Compass, laying it flat on his palm the way Geralt showed him to feed a horse (“she’ll take your fingers that way,” he’d said, all gruffness, the first time Jaskier offered Roach a carrot, holding it between his fingers like he might any other thing, and then he’d taken Jaskier’s hand for himself to guide his fingers into the right position, and it had been entirely unnecessary, and Jaskier had made a face when the mare gobbled up the carrot with more saliva than seemed reasonable, or even likely). There’s just as much saliva now, with Compass, or possibly more, and Jaskier doesn’t like it any better than he used to, but he scratches the gelding’s velvety nose when he’s done eating and says, “Good man,” before stepping over to Roach’s stall, where her nostrils are flaring with impatience.

“Yes, yes, I’ve got one for you as well, brat,” Jaskier assures her, reaching into the pack again. “Now if you pin your ears at me that way, I’m not going to give it to you—there’s a good beast.”

It’s quiet here in the barn, with only the sound of Roach crunching away, and Jaskier doesn’t usually care much for the quiet, but right now it feels like a thing he needs.

When Roach has finished, he collects his dish and supposes he might go back inside, join Geralt in bed again and see what fun there is to be had this morning, but he finds the idea less appealing than he usually would. Instead he lets himself into Compass’ stall and settles cross-legged on the floor in as clean a patch of straw as he can find. Compass wanders over to him and lips at his hair, and Jaskier surprises himself by laughing.

“I’m not an apple, you silly beast,” he says, reaching up to pat his neck, fingers combing through his mane. He wonders if braiding horsehair is much different from doing so for a human. He ought to ask Geralt; he likes the image that conjures up, of Geralt standing at Roach’s mane, those deft fingers gently pulling and arranging. A moment later the image shifts, to Geralt’s fingers on his own limp body, hauling him along when he hadn’t the strength to do it himself, and then those fingers are on Yennefer’s skin, trailing up the sorceress’ thigh and then higher, and Jaskier feels a wretched fool.

They’ve both of them had plenty of other lovers, and they’ve already discussed Yennefer, and it shouldn’t matter—but it does, somehow.

“Do you know,” he says, stroking Compass’s ears, the gelding’s head practically in his lap, “I’ve felt like my heart is breaking since we got here. There’s no reason for it.” He touches his mouth practically to the horse’s ear, confides, “And you know, I love him so terribly much.”

Compass whuffs, as though to say he understands, which is just silly. Jaskier lets his head fall back against the wall of the stall, his eyes closing, and continues to rub at Compass’ ears.

“You might do me a favor and live up to your name,” Jaskier tells him. “I went to all the trouble of making sure you weren’t called Also Roach. Would you mind pointing me in a direction? Maybe I should have called you Map, instead.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Aren’t I always?” Jaskier wonders just how much Geralt has heard of his one-sided little conversation. His witcher is standing at the stall door, his elbows resting on the edge. Jaskier raises an eyebrow and indicates the space beside him. “Do you want to come and sit with me?”

The door creaks a little as Geralt slides it open, but the man himself would be cat-silent slipping into the stall, if not for the straw. Not even the White Wolf of Rivia can be entirely soundless with a crackling layer of straw beneath his feet. He settles down beside Jaskier, who immediately slumps over to rest his head on Geralt’s shoulder, finding one of his hands to play with.

“When you got out of bed,” Geralt says, “I thought I’d find you pestering Bella and Selene. I don’t think you’ve ever come into a barn without me before.”

“Supposing I said I wanted to lure you out here to fuck me,” Jaskier says lightly.

“You think straw is too uncomfortable for fucking.”

“Ah.” Jaskier is somewhat stymied. “You know me too well.”

Geralt turns his hand to lace their fingers together, stopping Jaskier’s absent massaging. “What really brought you out here?”

“I did buy them apples yesterday,” Jaskier reminds him, and though that’s not the whole of it, he hopes Geralt will allow him to get away with the answer. It’s easier to confide in a horse, it turns out; maybe that’s why Geralt likes the beasts so much.

“You did,” Geralt agrees, and Jaskier holds his breath in the pause that follows, only releasing it when Geralt goes on with, “I need to look for work today.”

“I suppose you do.” Jaskier touches Compass’ nose with his free hand, as the gelding’s interest hasn’t shifted with Geralt’s arrival.

“Are you coming with me?”

“No,” Jaskier decides, supposes he’d already decided; he’s not sure, the way he feels, he can spend today looking at Geralt. “I’ve got a few things of my own to go and take care of. Friends to visit and all that.”

“And all that,” Geralt echoes, his hand squeezing just so, and Jaskier shifts so he can kiss the man, long and thorough, his eyes closing with the easy give and take of it; he wishes he’d been kissing Geralt for years more than he has. The thought lances through him, of wishes, and kissing, and this city, and there’s a stabbing sort of feeling in his chest, and he doesn’t think he could stop kissing the witcher if his life depended on it; so he doesn’t. He kisses him until the feeling recedes to something more manageable, and when he pulls back it is with the taste of Geralt on his tongue, and he feels a little more like he can breathe.

“I’ll meet you here again at sunset?”

“Don’t get into any trouble.” Geralt’s voice is rough with the kissing, and Jaskier is struck by the urge to do it again, again, again, to just hold Geralt here in this stall and kiss him while the sun rises and sets again, and he thinks Geralt would let him, but of course he can’t, so he hoists himself up before the less rational thought can win out.

“I mean the Goldenmane,” he clarifies, “not Compass’ stall.”

Geralt doesn’t argue, though he does give Jaskier a considering look, and Jaskier wonders how well his witcher can read him, but he doesn’t ask; he’s afraid, of asking.

The silence is broken by a loud _crack_ against the stall wall, and Geralt says a warning, “Roach.”

So they go their separate ways, and Jaskier passes the day with popping into a variety of bookshops—Rinde isn’t so well-supplied as Oxenfurt, not being built with a university as its beating heart, but it _is_ a large city, and Jaskier knows several shops always worth a visit—and checking on the state of his clothes, and finding a handful of places worth stopping to sing. There _are_ friends he might visit, but he doesn’t feel enough himself to do so. They might notice, and he wouldn’t know what to tell them.

_I_ _’m perfectly happy, and everything hurts, not to worry._

He doesn’t mean to find himself standing across from the rebuilt mayor’s house. He’s seen it since the destruction and subsequent reconstruction, of course he has, but it feels different now. Adds weight to that squeezing sensation; he half-wonders if Yennefer’s put some sort of curse on him.

There’s the window he looked through to see Geralt and Yennefer in the throes of—the throes of _something_ , to be sure, passion seems not the right word for it, but he cannot come up with another. _Some bard you are, Jask._ He hadn’t minded, then, it hadn’t hurt his heart nor his head to think about, made him feel so disconsolate.

Jaskier wrenches himself away from the place and the memory, and finds himself returning to the Goldenmane slightly early, where he begs a blanket from Selene and basketful of food from Bella, who threatens to hit him with her wooden spoon if he doesn’t _get your fingers out of there this very instant, bard_ , and he’s waiting for Geralt at the end of the mattress when the witcher returns, his skin and clothing whole and unbloodied. The blanket beside him, folded beneath the basket.

“Any luck today?” he asks, sounding too eager with it, verging on desperation.

Geralt studies him from several feet away. “I spoke to Mayor Neville.” Berrant’s replacement, Jaskier has only met the man once. “He has a few monsters he’ll offer coin for.”

“That’s good,” Jaskier says. “Did you mean to see to them tonight?”

“Not tonight,” Geralt says slowly. He comes closer, sets one hand atop the basket. “What is this?”

“I thought we might go and—” Jaskier hesitates. “Do you remember where you fished up that amphora? I _thought_ maybe we could go out there and just—just be, for a while?”

He expects Geralt to ask if he’s sure, at best, or if he’s lost his mind, at worst, but Geralt only nods and picks up both basket and blanket. They take Roach, leaving Compass perfectly content with fresh oats, to the place where Jaskier found Geralt searching for a solution to his insomnia.

Jaskier spreads the blanket upon the ground, near to the water. The surface ripples, starlit reflections dancing there. It’s dark here, so dark Jaskier can hardly see, but his eyes adjust enough for him to see what matters.

He sets himself on the blanket, runs a hand along the cotton surface. “Come on, then.”

They share their nighttime picnic of chicken, bread, baked apples, and a jug of wine, Jaskier idly handing stones off to Geralt for skipping across the water, splashing ruin through the reflections. “Do fish sleep?” he wonders aloud, passing over another stone.

“No idea.” Geralt lays his hand over Jaskier’s, but instead of taking the stone, he leaves it there, his fingers running from palm to wrist. “You want to tell me what we’re doing out here?”

Jaskier’s heart skips a beat; not a chance Geralt won’t have noticed. He swallows, not sure he’s got an answer. He just wants—he just _wants_ , with no place to put that wanting. “I thought it might be nice,” he says, _to replace a memory,_ “to be with you.” He keeps his eyes on Geralt’s hand. “This is where you realized, isn’t it? You said it was the djinn, so…”

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, and picks the stone from Jaskier’s palm; Jaskier’s eyes follow as it hops across the water, one, two, three—he only hears the fourth, and then the _plunk!_ , because Geralt is pulling him into a kiss, a sweet thing without any pressure in it. Kissing Geralt, he’s learned, is the easiest thing in the world to sink into. He’d expected it to be harder, like prying the man open to begin with had been; he hadn’t expected Geralt to open so well to him, to be ready and waiting the way he always is, the way he has been since that first night in Oxenfurt.

“I want to touch you,” Jaskier breathes into his mouth, “as much as I possibly can.”

“Happy to oblige,” Geralt says, and he huffs a laugh, resting his forehead on Geralt’s collar.

There’s the discarding of clothing, done so much more carefully than usual. Everything set aside in a pile that cannot be described as neat, but that it is a pile at all is more than can often be said of the frenzied way they strip each other bare, like they’ve never seen each other’s skin before and might never again.

Jaskier kisses his way along Geralt’s body, exploring muscles and scars he has already visited as many times as he possibly can in the weeks of this. They litter the witcher everywhere, and Jaskier can list every one of them, knows their shapes the way he knows the patterns of stars that litter the night sky.

_Oh, that’s quite good._

Jaskier rolls himself off of Geralt, mumbling, “Sorry, sorry, I’ve got to,” and reaching for his lute, and Geralt’s laughter is sweet in his ears. He strums almost absently, the wood of the instrument cool against his bare skin, and then Geralt is behind him as he plays, rough hands so gentle on his back he thinks again that he might cry. But he doesn’t cry, he only wets his lips with wine and sings, without thinking much of it, of constellations in scars, their stories cut deeper than the ones told by stars, and all the while Geralt’s hands are on his skin, not applying pressure, just ghosting over his spine, passing through his hair, and those lips are a balm on his shoulder.

“That was,” Geralt begins when he’s finished, but he doesn’t finish the sentence, and Jaskier crawls onto his lap, lute set aside atop their clothing.

"That was what?” Jaskier rests his fingers on Geralt’s face, letting their lips press together for just a moment before drawing back, meeting Geralt’s yellow eyes in the dark and not knowing why he hurts so much. Maybe the djinn left some scar inside him that waited until now to tear itself open and begin bleeding again, or maybe that was Yennefer’s doing, or maybe it was Geralt’s all along.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says on a sigh.

“Yeah,” Jaskier says, laughing and blinking hard at once. “Yeah, it was me. Anything else?”

“Beautiful.”

Jaskier kisses him more fiercely than he ever has before. He feels like a man possessed, and this time when they separate his hands are pressing so hard to Geralt’s face it can’t possibly feel nice, and he says, brokenly, “Geralt,” and only realizes he _is_ crying now when Geralt’s big palm cups his cheek and he feels the moisture on Geralt’s thumb.

“Fuck,” he says, teetering backwards and swiping ineffectually at his face, his eyes stinging. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I—”

Somewhere inside him, there is a djinn breaking free of an amphora, there is blood running down his lips, there are wishes being made.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Geralt says, his hands moving to Jaskier’s lower back, steadying him.

“Yes, I do,” Jaskier snaps; he doesn’t mean it to come out that way, and he sags against Geralt’s chest, arms wrapped around his neck, face buried in his neck. “I’ve got you naked, and what am I doing with it, I’m crying on you, like some sort of—some sort of—”

“Shh. You can cry, Dandelion.” Geralt’s lips press to his hair, and suddenly he’s crying harder, tears spilling stupidly from his eyes, and he curses himself for it. One of Geralt’s hands rubs up and down his back. “You can tell me what’s wrong. If you want to.”

“I don’t _know_ what’s wrong.” Jaskier would push closer, if there were closer to push. He doesn’t think what he’s going to say, just lets it all spill out in a rush. “I keep thinking of the djinn and Yennefer and that this is where you knew you loved me, but it’s also where you found her and you’ve never told me what you wished for and I always assumed it was her.”

The night isn’t so quiet in the aftermath as it might be, not with frogs and crickets and the lot; but it is quiet between them, aside from Jaskier’s sniffling.

“When we weren’t traveling together, I used to look at the stars if I missed you. I’d think of you telling me their stories. The way you’d sing them, like that was how they were always supposed to be told.” Geralt’s words are the lowest murmur. “I wished for you to be one of them.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Jaskier says, his voice thick, but at least he’s not blubbering his way through the words, his tears largely subsided.

He feels more than hears Geralt’s laugh. “Neither do I, but the djinn took it. Maybe it didn’t mean anything and all that mattered was the word.” He pauses. “I won’t apologize for Yen, Jaskier.”

“I don’t want you to.” Jaskier is surprised to find that he means it. He’s no fondness for the sorceress, but Geralt cares for her, and he won’t fault him his feelings. “I’m sorry,” he says again, muffled into Geralt’s skin. “I don’t mean to be a mess. If I’d known Rinde would do this to me I might have stayed behind.”

“Everyone has to be a mess once or twice,” Geralt says, “even the great bard Dandelion.”

“Oh, don’t try to pretend you’re full of sage wisdom now, I know you too well for that.” Jaskier presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, sure he must look awful; he’s never been an attractive crier. “Here, let me go, I’ve got to wash my face.”

He clambers gracelessly off of Geralt’s lap and down to the water’s edge. He steps in as deep as his ankles and bends over to splash his face. When he straightens, Geralt is behind him, and what a sight they would make if someone chanced by. Jaskier tips his head back and studies the stars he can see from here. “Which do you suppose I am, then?”

“The brightest one,” Geralt says, and kisses him beneath the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously not the canon wish, but [hey](https://pics.me.me/not-to-worry-l-have-a-permit-rick-i-can-33395778.png).
> 
> Stay safe everyone!
> 
> (And if you're waiting for things like Jaskier topping...I promise they're on the way.)


	5. peach-thieves & dandelion wine

_Yet if not flower,tell me softly who  
_  
_be these haunters of dreams  
_

E.E. Cummings

“We should go to that flower faire.”

Jaskier is most of the way into drowsing when Geralt says it, their room at the Goldenmane dark around them. Geralt’s head rests on his stomach, his fingers are tangled in the witcher’s hair, and his heart has long since slowed to its ordinary beating. They’ve been several days in Rinde, and on its outskirts, while Geralt has taken care of a few troublesome beasts for the mayor. Barghests and graveirs and fleders, oh my.

He takes a moment summoning the energy to say, “Should we?”

“It starts tomorrow,” Geralt says, which isn’t an answer.

“Think there might be witcher’s work among the flowers, do you?” Jaskier asks dubiously.

“No.” Geralt’s breath is warm on Jaskier’s bare skin, makes his stomach jump. He’s got one hand curled protectively over Jaskier’s knee. Having sex with Geralt is always extraordinary, but Jaskier thinks both of them live for the after, when they lay together in a tangled heap of limbs and sweat and caring. “Yes.”

Jaskier says a sage, “Ah,” and Geralt makes an irritated sound into his skin, which tickles.

“Stop squirming.”

The gruffness only makes Jaskier squirm once more, with feeling. “You stop, you’re _scratchy_.”

“You complain too much,” Geralt grumbles, rough fingers running up toward the join of Jaskier’s hip. “You.”

“Me,” Jaskier agrees.

Geralt raises his head, hand pressing into Jaskier’s hipbone to hold him down. “You looked like you wanted to go.”

Jaskier’s heart skips. “Oh,” he says, understanding. “The witcher’s work of pleasing your bard, is it? do come here.” He tugs Geralt, just a little, by his hair, so that Geralt comes in for a kiss. “I’m sure the faire will be a good place for a dandelion.”

This is how, the morning following, they’re riding north, leaving Compass at the Goldenmane for collecting later. Jaskier had spoken more with Tuomas before his party departed the city, poking for information about the town and when exactly this festival of his would begin. It’s a place called Wyrasta, not so far from Rinde, but not along anything so convenient as a road, and Jaskier is sure he remembers some mention of it in Streng’s _Histories of Redania_ , though he still hasn’t placed it.

They make their way by landmark—the so-called Great Rock, which Jaskier finds terribly aspirational for an ugly, misshapen stone, and a hickory tree once unfortunately coupled with an arm of lightning, and a rock formation that _does_ look like an alligator—while Jaskier muses over the familiarity of the town’s name, his hands idle on Geralt’s thighs. The moment they crest a hill daubed with pink dogwoods in full bloom and flowers grown high as Geralt’s stirrups, Jaskier knows they’ve arrived.

“My,” he breathes, and wriggles his way off of Roach with such a paucity of grace and excess of eagerness he nearly introduces his nose to a patch of pale green flowers shot through with silver. He stays knelt before them, too distracted to correct his awkward landing. Maybe they’re only something similar, he thinks, tracing bell-shaped blossoms; but they can’t be anything else, because he’s never heard of another flower that looks anything like—

“Is something wrong?” Geralt asks, having swung himself onto the ground.

“Not wrong,” Jaskier says, transfixed. They’ve a sweet smell to them, that reminds him of lilacs and also of rain. “Just interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“Interesting like I might have just rediscovered a species.” Jaskier realizes his lips are dry, wets them with a rapid flick of his tongue, and tips his head back to look up at Geralt. “These are Isolde’s tears, and they’ve been extinct for…for as long as anything has.”

The last record of them being seen was at a border skirmish-turned-slaughter, before Redania was Redania at all; the valley where they grew was soaked through with so much blood and tears, and nothing sprouted there for years after; there’s an entire ballad about it, the sort that makes people cry.

And the flowers were gone, except here they are on a hilltop.

Jaskier straightens up and looks down the other side of the hill into a widespread valley, at the rich landscape of summer growth and the glittering body of water toward the back; he smiles. “Shall we?”

With that, it’s down and into the town of Wyrasta. On an ordinary day, Jaskier would think it charming; today it is dressed to impress. The place is all colors: reds and oranges and purples and yellows and pinks and blues in all the shades nature can bring to bear. There are trees sat where they like, as though few were cut down to make room for buildings and construction was only built up where the set of the trees would allow; the tree boughs are heavy with fruit that Jaskier imagines plucking and sinking his teeth into. It’s unimaginably beautiful, and Jaskier finds he can do little more than stare.

“This is stunning,” he says eventually. “I’m properly stunned.”

Geralt “hmm”s at him, but Jaskier knows he’s impressed. Anyone would be, and Geralt’s not immune to nature’s charms.

Jaskier is keeping an eye out for any other plants that haven’t been seen since years of legend, when his gaze falls on the daisies popping up in a circle at the base of a yew tree, and he cocks his head a little. “That’s curious.”

“What is?” Geralt follows where he indicates, but sounds unperturbed, like it’s perfectly normal for a flower meaning innocence to surround a tree that usually stands for sorrow.

Jaskier waves his hand in a way that could mean ‘well, look at it’ or ‘never mind’ or both. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Just looking at the flowers.”

There are plenty of them to catch his eye, from orchids to hydrangeas to camellias. Jaskier can hardly decide where to look for all the color that fights to draw his attention. It would clash, anywhere else, but here it’s the perfect study of beauty, and Jaskier is utterly fascinated by it. And if, on occasion, he catches sight of a flower that doesn’t seem quite right…well, they probably don’t _know_ any better, do they. Maybe he’ll just nip in and have a word with whomever decides the placements as long as they’re here. It’ll be best, in the long run, if they don’t put the marigolds and the mugwort where they can tangle all up together; it does send the wrong message to anybody who’s ever bothered to read up on such things. Then, it doesn’t look like any of this was planted so much as it chose to grow.

As they round a corner, Jaskier catches sight of a familiar face among all the petals and leaves: Tuomas, outside a cottage that is itself laden with ivy and sweet pea, speaking with a young woman Jaskier can only assume is his sweetheart, the look on his face. He waves to get the man’s attention when they’re halfway to him, and Tuomas looked first shocked, then pleased.

“Master Dandelion,” he calls. “I didn’t expect you to come.”

“I thought I’d blend right in,” Jaskier says when they reach him. “The colors, my name, you understand.” He touches Geralt’s arm. “You’ll have to excuse Geralt. I’ve tried introducing him to other shades, and he won’t have any of it. But he is handsome in black.”

Tuomas’ laugh is edged with nerves. “Master Dandelion, and Geralt, this is Ellia, and Ellia this is—”

“They hardly need introductions.” The woman, Ellia, laughs. She’s quite pretty, with a heart-shaped face and a full mouth and sun-blonde hair. There’s a chain of celandine looped around her wrist.

“So,” Tuomas says, his face bright and eager, “what do you think?”

“I think we haven’t seen the faire yet.” Jaskier idly combs his fingers through Geralt’s hair, a habit he picked up during hours on Roach’s back, long before he ever kissed the man; possibly Geralt’s tolerance for it should have been a hint.

“It begins tonight.” Ellia nods into a general sort of distance, where Jaskier thinks the water might be. “There’s sort of a ceremony, and then a party.”

“We do love parties, don’t we,” Jaskier says, and Geralt grunts.

“We need to find a place for ourselves and Roach.”

“You could,” Tuomas begins, and clears his throat for another attempt, “you could stay with Ellia and I. We have the room, and for your horse—”

“No,” Geralt interrupts, tone brooking no room for argument. Jaskier curls his fingers through Geralt’s hair again, at the back of his neck. _Settle, darling,_ he doesn’t say aloud. “We’ll have an inn. There is one?”

“There is,” Tuomas says, the disappointment evident on his face.

“Don’t fret,” Jaskier says mildly, “you’ll see plenty of me about. It’s what bards are for, isn’t it? Witchers are for killing monsters and bards are for being seen. Being heard, I suppose, I would so hate to deprive anyone of the sight of me. The performance does lose something.”

“I’ll show you to the inn,” Ellia volunteers. “You can settle in before the ceremony tonight.”

“Thank you,” Jaskier says. “And we’d love to have a look around your fair town, I’m sure. A faire town, that is, with an e.” He smiles, pleased with his own cleverness, and Geralt frowns back at him, because he’s no sense of humor at all.

And so they do, once they’ve settled Roach into a paddock alive with sunflowers and daylillies—both of which Geralt declares horse-safe—and their few brought-along belongings into a room more cozy than fine. This inn, unlike the Goldenmane, seems more a gathering place for the town than for visitors, but the rooms are settled, not shabby, and they won’t be spending much time indoors, anyway; Jaskier takes Geralt by the hand and pulls him from the inn, and along they go.

To say there are flowers _everywhere_ would somehow still be a gross understatement. The ground is a carpeting of color, while plants like ivy and honeysuckle twist artfully up the sides of buildings, and Jaskier quickly loses count of the flowering bushes and branches. They follow a downward slope toward the body of water; there are trees here as well, plopped in any untidy grove around what appears to be either a small lake or a large pond, Jaskier’s not sure where the difference lies, no matter his interest in geography. He’s always suspected the ‘difference’ is a ruse to make one sound superior to the other, or more the sort of thing wealthy might keep in their yard; his mother surely did, called the thing a pond and filled it with fish and forbade him from putting one toe in it. Whichever this is, there’s an island in the middle of it, a tiny island with room enough for three at the most, and on the island there’s a statue, a beautifully carved woman of gray stone, one hand extended, palm up and open.

The trees near the water are all peach trees, laden with fruit and candying the air to sweetness. Jaskier breathes in deep, smells not just the peaches but the water, and the flowers too. It ought to be just this side of too much, not the perfect commingling it is.

“These are very impressive,” he observes to Geralt, fingers extended toward a branch; his fingertips brush over the fuzzy skin of one ripe fruit. His eyes catch on a twist of dogsbane and white periwinkle at the base of the tree, and he nearly frowns. “I didn’t know peaches grew near Rinde at all, never mind doing it half so well as all this.”

Before Geralt can grunt a reply, a woman of perhaps forty, with dancing green eyes and positive waves of hair playing between brown and black, plucks the peach right from Jaskier’s reach and says, “They’re always like that here, even in the dead of winter,” and takes a bite. She grins, once she’s swallowed, and makes a broad gesture toward the—Jaskier settles, generously, on lake. “It’s all thanks to her.”

“Who?” Jaskier follows the gesture, but there are any number of women crouched at the lake’s edge, cupping their hands in the water or walking into it, some as high as their waist; he wonders how deep the water goes.

The peach-thief laughs. Her laugh matches her voice, light like a nice breeze. “None of them. _Her._ ”

“You don’t mean the statue, do you?”

Jaskier smiles, expecting her to laugh and to tease him, but the woman murmurs, “That statue,” her eyes resting on it, and Jaskier has to take a second look at the thing. It is beautiful, but he doesn’t see what that has to do with peaches.

Still, what better time or place to go out on a limb, so he says, “I don’t suppose she’s related to all the Isolde’s tears growing on the hill?” The woman looks at him in surprise, and he shrugs. “It’s only they were wiped out, so I do have to wonder about them.”

Her smile broadens. “Yes,” she says simply, like it makes all the sense in the world; with that, she lopes away between peach trees, leaving Jaskier to cock his head at the aspen leaves that flutter from her skirts.

“Well,” he decides after a moment, “that was odd.”

“Not the oddest.” Geralt is scanning the lake himself, his nose twitching in that ‘trying to sniff something out’ way of his.

“No,” Jaskier agrees, “that would be you,” and Geralt gives him a look that pretends sourness.

They pass the remaining hours of daylight exploring the town, until everyone around them begins toward the lake, and the sound of singing picks up: first one voice, Jaskier thinks a man’s, then joined by a woman, and then another two voices, then three more layered over top. It takes him a moment to register the words are in Elder Speech, and then that they’re singing of the Lady of Blossoms, which isn’t a name he’s heard in any legends before. He gives Geralt a curious look, but if his witcher has any answers, his face gives no indication.

The town’s population can’t be more than a handful of hundreds, and the whole of it seems to be gathered at the lake. Jaskier keeps a hold on Geralt’s arm, “pardon us”ing their way nearer the front, where the peach-thief woman stands with a collection of children in matching cloaks lined by yellow acacia flowers, and he doesn’t have the first idea what to make of any of them. There’s the group of singers as well, their voices fading strangely over the water as they disperse into the press of townsfolk.

The crowd is more silent than Jaskier knew a crowd could be. He expects the woman to speak, but she only curtsies to the crowd, who bow in return; she turns then to the children, three girls and three boys, and kisses them upon their foreheads. The children fetch baskets of flowers set in a line before them and step, themselves, into the crowd.

It’s difficult to follow their progress through the crowd, but when Jaskier does see them, they’re offering flowers, always with an exchange Jaskier cannot hear well enough, except to know that it’s more Elder, so he tips his head toward Geralt and asks, “What are they saying?”

“ _Aen laith,_ ” Geralt tells him, “and _aep tir_.”

Jaskier scrunches his nose up. From the lady. For the land. Ellia and Tuomas might have said something about all this.

One of the little girls, this one with red hair and wide brown eyes, appears in front of him with her basket, and Jaskier can only blink at her as she offers him a long-stemmed flower, green shot with silver, and says, “ _Aen laith_.”

Jaskier says, “ _Aep tir_ ,” as though he’s said it a thousand times; there are benefits to his career choice, contrary to what his parents might believe.

The girl curtsies and winds back into the crowd, and Jaskier looks about surreptitiously to see if Isolde’s tears are a common choice among the crowd; as far as he can tell, he’s holding the only one.

They stand there for what must be an hour or more while the children hand out flowers to, Jaskier thinks, every individual among the crowd—even Geralt receives a camellia from a girl with a shy smile, who Jaskier has to assure he doesn’t bite, in the knowledge that of course Geralt bites, but only bards, and he doesn’t say so to the girl, who might not appreciate the distinction—until, finally, the children gather again with the woman, baskets emptied.

“Come forward,” the peach-thief says, “ _imbaelk._ _”_

Jaskier has a moment to wonder what in the world she means by ‘sprouting’ before Geralt’s hand is pressing at his lower back and the witcher’s breath is warm on his ear with, “Go.”

“How can you possibly kno—” Jaskier’s voice falls away, because Geralt’s medallion is vibrating, and he supposes that explains everything; something, at least. He gives Geralt a lopsided smile. “When in Wyrasta, I suppose.”

Then he moves through the crowd until he reaches the absolute front, and the peach-thief woman indicates a place on her left. The matching spot to her right is already taken by Ellia, who’s holding a second Isolde’s tear with reverence. Jaskier takes his place.

The woman says, “Until tomorrow,” in the common tongue, and the crowd calls back the same, holding their flowers in the air. Jaskier’s eyes find Geralt and his camellia. Ellia holds her bell-shaped flower out toward him, so he mirrors her, wondering if his puzzlement shows on his face.

“Shall we drink?” Ellia says, her voice conspiratorial, before he’s asked any of his (many) questions.

“I suppose we shall,” Jaskier says, because it seems rude to say anything different; the drinks do flow freely after that, and he doesn’t hesitate to partake, his flower tucked into the pocket of his shirt.

* * *

Jaskier wakes Geralt by his usual method of choice, so it is with lips shining-wet that he opens the door to their room and finds, as well as their breakfast, a chain of hibiscus and cuckoo flowers and honey flowers. He slides it over his wrist before hefting the platter, an assortment of bread and fruit. Once the tray is safely on a table, he says, “I do believe somebody is endeavoring to court me,” dangling the chain from one finger. “Tuomas and Ellia, probably.”

Geralt is off the bed in a heartbeat, and his hands are on Jaskier’s hips, and his mouth is catching Jaskier’s, and he uses the distraction to snatch the flower chain.

“That wasn’t playing fair,” Jaskier says mildly. “Though as far as courtship goes, you might have done worse.”

“ _This_ is courting?” Geralt holds up the chain, a dubious look on his face.

“Cuckoo means ardor,” Jaskier says, reaching out to finger the petals in question, “and hibiscus for beauty, and honey flower for love, sweet and secret.” He pauses, and adds an offhanded, “Not a perfect fit, I admit.”

He watches Geralt’s face shift so it looks like he’s tasted something bitter, his nose crinkling adorably. “Should I—”

Jaskier laughs. “No, I don’t think so.” He takes Geralt’s face in his hands and kisses him, and says, "I’m perfectly happy without flowers. They’re right in my name already, aren’t they? What do I need with more of them? Still,” he licks into Geralt’s mouth, pressed close enough to feel the man’s cock stirring again, knowing he tastes of him and stirring himself at the thought, “everything there is to know about beasties in that head of yours, and naught about courtship. I’ll have to have a word with Vesemir. Your lessons were sorely lacking, darling.”

“Vesemir’s focus was swordplay.”

“Ah. Then who do I talk to, I wonder?” Jaskier kisses him again, soft and sweet, and Geralt may not know a thing about the language of flowers, but he’s well-versed enough in mouths. “But I suppose somebody must have taught you _something_.” He snags the flower chain back from Geralt and sets it carefully aside; care went into it, no reason to let such fine work be crushed because Geralt is a territorial sort of man, and then he says, “Oh, I do love you,” for no more reason than it’s occurred to him to say it.

Geralt takes his mouth again, and Jaskier murmurs into him, “Shall we go back to bed a while? You can show me all you know of swordplay, and I’ll show you something of courtship”; it takes them an awfully long time to get to their breakfast.

Eventually, they do make their way downstairs, properly dressed and everything, Jaskier with his lute over his shoulder, last night’s Isolde’s tear tucked behind his ear, and Geralt with his swords, Jaskier unable to persuade him he won’t need them here, that they haven’t come for _that_ sort of witcher’s work, does he mean to engage in a bout with the flowers, perhaps? what a terribly unfair contest that would be!

“The medallion reacted to something yesterday,” Geralt had reminded him. “I couldn’t smell through the flowers, but there’s something here.”

And Jaskier had allowed, “I suppose,” and hasn’t yet dispensed of the image of Geralt taking to the fields with his blades dancing like petals in wind.

In the inn’s common room they find Ellia and Tuomas and the peach-thief woman, sitting all together at a table; there are a few of the children too, hanging about, and Jaskier supposes they must know their business. Ellia’s flower is in her hair.

“Good morning,” Jaskier calls, all breezy ease, pulling Geralt along with him to their table. “What happens today, then? Tuomas has set my expectations very high, you know.”

The peach-thief woman studies him. “I’m told your name is Dandelion.”

“Sometimes,” Jaskier agrees. “Sometimes it’s also Jaskier, and on rare occasions it’s Julian, but I think Dandelion best for the environment, don’t you?”

She smiles. “I do.”

“I never caught _your_ name yesterday.”

“I never threw it,” she says, and pauses, her eyes slipping from him to Ellia and back again. “There are many festival activities today, and tomorrow as well, and I’m sure these two would be happy to tell you about them. But the most important—” her hand rises, indicating the flower at his ear, “my children chose you, and so you’ll take part in a second ceremony tonight, at the heart tree, and tomorrow you’ll decide what to do with this flower.”

“This extinct flower?” Jaskier clarifies, and the peach-thief woman who will not throw her name laughs.

“The very one.” She rises, and the children follow her from the inn like ducklings after their mother.

Tuomas and Ellia are still in their seats, so Jaskier smiles at them and says, “I’m going to do what now?” He’s lost the thread of the conversation somewhere, though on second thought he’s not sure he ever had the thread to begin with. What an _odd_ festival this is. He wonders if Geralt’s medallion can react simply to something being strange, even without the presence of magic.

“You and I are _imbaelk_.” Ellia’s cheeks are tinted curiously pink; Jaskier brushes it off, it’s probably to do with the flower chain.

“Right, sprouting, I remember,” Jaskier says, aware of Geralt standing behind his chair, perfectly still. He touches his fingers to the flower at his ear. “So what does that mean?”

“It means we have to share a kiss,” Ellia says, and Jaskier blinks at her, wondering if he’s misheard.

“Come again?”

“At the heart tree, for a fruitful year.” Ellia’s fingers play at the golden chain around her neck, the one Tuomas purchased in Rinde. “It’s tradition.”

“Where is the heart tree?” Geralt asks, which is _not_ what Jaskier expected him to say.

Ellia’s eyes flick toward him. “The great oak in the center of town.”

Jaskier recalls the tree, seeing it wreathed in flowers as they explored yesterday; he’d wondered aloud who’d climbed the thing to tie peonies to the highest branches. “I suppose I can manage kissing a pretty girl,” Jaskier says, with a somewhat tense lightness, “for tradition.”

Geralt squeezes his shoulder, not hard enough to hurt.

“And the flower?”

“I think you should hear the telling first,” Tuomas says, the first he’s offered this morning aside from a nervous smile. Such skittish creatures, these.

“The telling?”

“The story of Wyrasta,” Tuomas says. “She’ll tell it tonight, before your—” He gestures faintly, and Jaskier wonders if he’s jealous.

“I don’t suppose either of _you_ care to tell me her name?” Tuomas and Ellia exchange a look. “Oh, good.”

“She hasn’t got a name,” Ellia says apologetically.

“She hasn’t got a name,” Jaskier echoes, amused and resigned. He looks up at Geralt. “Did you hear that, Geralt? She hasn’t got a name.”

“I heard,” Geralt says.

“You can call her The Lady,” Tuomas offers. “We mostly do.”

“I think I’ll keep calling her the peach-thief woman,” Jaskier says with a wink, “if it’s all the same to you.”

Ellia says, “Um.”

“All right.” Jaskier plants his palms flat on the table and leans forward. “I’m going to kiss Ellia and hear a story, but what else? Do tell me about these festival activities.”

And so they do, going on at impressive length, and when they’ve run out of steam, Jaskier says, “Sounds to me like there’s never a dull moment, and that’s good, I hate dull moments. I had better see as much as I can then. Shall we?” He rises, and finds Geralt’s arm slipped into his elbow; he waves for Ellia and Tuomas to go ahead, he’ll only be a moment, and focuses on Geralt. “You’re awfully quiet. You always are, but—are you jealous, then?”

“You can kiss who you want,” Geralt says, and before Jaskier can protest that _want_ has nothing to do with it, “I’m going to see what I can find.”

Jaskier catches his meaning and frowns. “I thought we might enjoy the festival _together_. It’s not so much fun if I’m on my own—and don’t be tiresome and say I’ll be with Tuomas and Ellia, you know that’s not what I mean. Besides, you still don’t know a thing about flowers, what if you miss—”

“I want you to talk to people, Jaskier,” Geralt interrupts, his voice low. “See what you can learn about local legends. The traditions. Some of them might be rooted—don’t say it—” Jaskier’s mouth has curved, but he spares Geralt the comment, “in what’s here. You can tell me tonight what you’ve learned.”

“Oh, all right,” Jaskier says, not masking his disappointment. He wanted—he supposes it doesn’t matter, he and Geralt are together all the time, but he _wanted_ a romantic spot of fun with his witcher, a few days free of travel or finding some monster to slay, though monsterslaying doesn’t seem to be the sort of game afoot here. “I’ll do my best, but first—”

Jaskier takes Geralt’s face in his hands and kisses him, until Geralt’s hands come to his hip and the flower in his hair.

“Do think on that,” he says, before turning on his heel and slipping into the daylight, where Ellia and Tuomas are waiting, smiling to himself at the look he’s left on Geralt’s face.

It’s not a complete loss, as far as days go. Geralt was right to send him out for interacting with people. He puts together chains of flowers, sharing pleasant chats with those around him, and spends a while singing beneath a tree, and lunches there with his new companions. All the while, people look at him knowingly, or at the flower he was given, and he suspects he wasn’t given the entire truth this morning, but he’ll work his way to it.

“So,” he says mildly, “which of you is responsible for the flower chain, or was it both, or was that intended for Geralt? If it was for Geralt I’m afraid it was lost on him.”

Ellia avoids his eyes, but her fingers still on her flower.

“I thought as much,” Jaskier says, despite the lack of answer, and assures them, “I am flattered, you know.” He rests his chin on one palm, other hand absently strumming at his lute without truly playing. Tuomas’ cheeks are dark, and truly, Jaskier would kiss him—Jaskier _thinks_ of kissing him, how those lips would part with surprise, but he thinks about it faraway, with a detachment he’d nearly call academic, because where it is a matter of _want_ , there’s only one person he wants to kiss. He smiles and changes the subject, somewhat. “Do either of you care to tell me the truth about tonight?”

“We have told you the truth,” Ellia says, but her skin’s gone pink as well; what a pair these two make. Their children are doomed to turning all sorts of colors.

“I’m sure you’ve told me some of it,” Jaskier says, as kindly as he can; he’s not interested in humiliating the poor thing.

Ellia worries at her bottom lip. Eventually she says, “There _can_ be more.”

Jaskier is unsurprised, all the plants and—nature, he supposes. There are similar festivals in other villages, and the concept of Belleteyn isn’t so far removed; Jaskier’s thoughts wander a moment, then, toward spending next Belleteyn with Geralt, in bed with him, and oh, he’s going to enjoy it when spring comes around again. Not that they need an excuse; but it is fun to have one. Aloud he says, “I thought there might be,” and focuses his attention on Tuomas. “And you wouldn’t mind?”

“It would be you,” Tuomas says, and Jaskier laughs, and closes his eyes. Tradition is such an odd thing, not one he finds himself fond of.

Evening falls, eventually, and Jaskier allows the couple to escort him to the heart tree; tonight he takes notice of the small building beside it, garlanded through with forget-me-nots and aspen leaves and peach blossoms. _A touch of privacy,_ he thinks wryly. There’s a spindle tree as well, and the yellow lillies and dragonplants don’t escape his notice. It _could_ all be coincidental. Accidental, even. But he doesn’t think so.

Ellia guides him all the way to the front, where the peach-thief woman stands with her child attendants. He bows, because Ellia does, and she’s the one who knows this ceremony. The girl who presented him with the Isolde’s tear last night takes his hand and draws him to one side, while a boy takes Ellia to the other; her own flower-giver, he assumes. His eyes flick toward a flash of long white hair in the crowd, but Geralt is moving and there’s no chance to catch his eye.

The peach-thief woman rests two fingers on Jaskier’s wrist, does the same to Ellia, and begins to speak.

“Once on this land,” she says, her voice seeming to rise in a very physical sense that makes Jaskier wonder if he could learn a thing like that, if it’s magic, “there was a queen of wilds. The queen ruled not over people, and not over land, but over her own piece of magic, and she ruled it well. The land—which often considered itself hers, and did so with pride, a point over which queen and land would never agree—grew full of rare fruits, of plants that wouldn’t often mix with each other, but refrained from quarrel in order to please her.

“The queen was an ageless woman, and content to spend her days and months and years barefoot among her plants, fingers covered in soil and magic.” She pauses. “She was content until the day her plants brought her a man, sick from hunger, but with a hickory crown atop his head.” She spares a fond look for the hickory tree, or the heart tree, whichever. “The man was only a man, and the queen fell in love with him as she nursed him back to health; he told her the hickory crown was a gift from his own wild king, to give to her as a gift of courtship. The queen refused this king’s suit in favor of the man she’d come to know. She had never met a king, after all, and what use had she for one?

“The man gave her the gift of the hickory crown despite her refusal, and he called her beautiful—it was only a truth, he said—and said that he needed to bring the answer to his king, that he would return afterward. They made love here,” and Jaskier has a sense she does mean _here_ , where they stand, “and then he left. The queen was alone. She had been alone before, but only knew it now. She wore her hickory crown every day, carving a notch with every one, to mark his time away. A year passed, a harsh winter beyond the queen’s lands, and with spring’s arrival the queen buried her hickory crown, knowing he would not return. The crown, having some mind of its own after its time in the queen’s lands, grew tall and strong, into the heart tree you see behind me.

“The queen passed years more on her own, taking comfort from her plants and her magic. She cared for the hickory tree, and though she never marked it with the passage of time, the hickory tree kept the hickory crown it began as at its core, and marked itself, and knew that when the man returned it had been ten years.” She pauses a second time, longer; she looks from Ellia to Jaskier and back again. “All it took was a kiss, and the land thrived beyond before.”

Her hands fall away from Jaskier and Ellia’s wrists. The children pull them together, and push them into the garlanded building. Inside, it is dimly lit by a semicircle of candles. There is a pile of blankets on the floor. Jaskier’s mouth twitches; he’d have loved this, once, wouldn’t he.

Jaskier ponders Ellia in the flickering candlelight. He doesn’t move when she takes a step closer, nor when she leans in to press her lips to his own; he doesn’t kiss her back, but if this is a part of their tradition, he can at least have the decency to allow himself to be kissed. It’s only when her hands begin to reach lower that he stops her, catching each wrist. “Not that, I think,” he says with a somewhat wan smile.

“Oh,” Ellia says, her face coloring anew. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry,” he says, shrugging with one shoulder. “I suppose it’s a fertility thing, sex is beneficial and all? But you did say there _can_ be more, not mandatory, I hope?”

“Yes,” she says, and then more hastily, “no. Only I had heard it said that you were very open to…” She trails off, leaving the rest unsaid.

“I have been,” Jaskier says agreeably. “And I do hate to disappoint, but I’ve lately found myself entirely devoted to the White Wolf, and I’m not very interested in…expanding my repertoire, if you will?”

A laugh bubbles from Ellia’s lips. She takes his hand. “Will you stay with me for a few minutes then?”

“I would be delighted,” Jaskier says, and means it. After a moment’s silence he clears his throat. “All Wyrasta’s not going to stay out there and wait for us to—”

“No,” Ellia says, and blows out one of the candles. “That hasn’t been done since years before I was born.”

“Good,” Jaskier says, with palpable relief. He can just imagine Geralt among a crowdful of people thinking his bard might—oh. His fingers feel cold. What if Geralt expects him to take the opportunity? You can kiss who you want, he’d said. He teeters uncertainly toward the door. “I have to go, I’m sorry, I have to find Geralt.”

Ellia blows out another candle, appears satisfied with her work, and follows him from the building, back into what would be the shade of the hickory-heart tree, if it were daytime. The townsfolk, as well as the peach-thief woman and her attendants, have indeed gone; Jaskier hears the sounds of merriment throughout the town. There’s no sign of Geralt.

Quite distractingly, there _is_ a wraith.

At least, Jaskier thinks it’s a wraith, can’t think of another word for the thing shaped like a person, all made up of swirling flower petals, yellow acacia and peach blossom and—and aspen leaves, and he remembers the peach-thief woman loping away in yesterday’s sunlight.

Jaskier stumbles back a step, but Ellia only waves to the flower-wraith. He raises his own hand for a weak wave. He’s done stranger things in his time with Geralt. Been wished into a star, apparently, whatever that might mean; six years on and he hasn’t noticed himself trailing a mess of stardust everywhere he goes.

“I imagine I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says to Ellia, and only realizes he’s forgotten to ask about tomorrow’s flower business when he’s alone in the dark. It’ll have to wait. In the meantime, he sets off in search of several things, the first being a good bottle of wine. He has a hunch they’ll have the sort he’s looking for in this of all towns, and comes to find he’s right.

It takes a fair amount of wandering, after that, but eventually he finds Geralt beneath a peach tree perhaps ten feet from the water, his eyes on the roots, his fingers down among the grass.

“There you are,” Jaskier says, and, setting the wine aside, clambers to his knees in order to kiss Geralt along that remarkable jawline; in his head, he tweaks the song, his greatest work that nobody will ever hear, save these ears in front of him.

“I expected you to be longer.” Geralt is tense; Jaskier wouldn’t notice, if he didn’t know him so well.

“There’s no need to be jealous,” Jaskier murmurs, and pauses. “Unless it’ll make for more fun in bed, in which case be as jealous as you like. But there’s naught to be jealous _of_.”

“Those two,” Geralt says, and he’s all stiffness and awkwardness and Jaskier will never be able to make him understand how precious he finds him, no matter how large he is, how terrifying he may be when the occasion calls for it, as occasions so often do.

“Find me attractive, certainly, and I did think about it.” Jaskier stops, purses his lips at himself. “No, that came out wrong. I thought about how I’d have been in bed with them before they finished asking, before I realized—but I _have_ realized, and you know I have, and how many times do you need to hear it to believe it?” He takes Geralt’s face in both hands the way he did this morning, only his fingers dig in harder this time, so he’d worry about hurting anybody else, and he kisses Geralt until Geralt kisses him back.

“At least one more,” Geralt says after, his voice hoarse, and Jaskier sighs against his mouth.

“Don’t be difficult,” he chides.

“I’m not being difficult,” Geralt says.

“You are,” Jaskier assures him, licking at his bottom lip.

“I’m trying to tell you,” Geralt says, and the strain in it makes Jaskier ease back some, to look at his face. “I never expected you to change your habits for me. If you wanted to—”

“No,” Jaskier says, a firm thing. “I’m as selfish as you are, this is all to my own benefit. You don’t leave me wanting. Will we need to have this conversation many more times? I thought I was meant to be the tiresome one.”

Geralt kisses him, and there’s more behind that kiss than Geralt would ever manage in words. Jaskier allows him the lead, his palms flat to Geralt’s chest. When the kiss slows to its finish, Jaskier rests his forehead against Geralt’s and says, “Have a drink with me. That’s one of their traditions, you know, I did my part today.”

“Drinking is a tradition everywhere,” Geralt says, but he takes the bottle when Jaskier hands it to him, tips his head back for a long drink.

“It’s having a drink with your lover that’s the point.” Jaskier accepts the bottle back and has a gulp before passing it back.

“Is this—”

“Dandelion wine?” Jaskier winks. “Seemed appropriate.”

“I already have a dandelion to taste,” Geralt says, and it shouldn’t make Jaskier blush so fiercely, nor should it cause that swooping sensation in his stomach, but here he is, and Geralt is looking at him like tasting isn’t out of the question here by the lake.

Jaskier has to look away, and finds himself gazing up into the peach tree. It occurs to him that he still hasn’t eaten one, owing to the peach-thief woman who might also be—

“A wraith,” he blurts out, and Geralt’s brow furrows. “When Ellia and I came out of that little building, there was—I don’t know, _something_ all made of flower petals. Ellia wasn’t very surprised to see it. I sort of thought it might be that woman, you know, the one who stole my peach yesterday.”

On that note, he springs to his feet and swipes a full, fat peach from the branch overhead. He covers the little distance to the water and crouches there to properly rinse away the fuzz this time, then returns to Geralt, who’s still sitting there with the dandelion wine, and Jaskier knows the lines of thinking on his face. He settles back onto the ground, planting—ha!—one knee to either side of Geralt’s hips.

“Supposing we focus on the wraith tomorrow,” Jaskier says, and takes his first bite. The peach’s flavor explodes across his tongue, the sweetest he’s ever had. It’s a mess of a thing, juice dripping down his chin and fingers when he sinks his teeth in for a second bite. He’s fully conscious of Geralt’s eyes on his mouth.

“Tomorrow,” Geralt agrees, and Jaskier feels a stab of triumph as he offers the peach, letting it press to Geralt’s lips.

“Care to taste?”

Geralt takes hold, not of the peach, but of Jaskier’s wrist, and he nearly drops the fruit. Even then Geralt doesn’t take a bite; he licks at Jaskier’s fingers, and Jaskier makes a soft, almost inquiring sort of sound that gives way to something needier when Geralt’s tongue delves between his fingers, licking at the sensitive skin.

“That’s—that’s not really what I meant.” Jaskier’s breath shakes on the words.

Geralt stops long enough to say, “Then you should have been more specific,” and then his tongue is on Jaskier’s wrist, and Jaskier’s cock jumps.

“This is terribly sticky,” he says, because for all the drag of Geralt’s tongue, juice still trickles from the fruit in his slippery, somehow still-holding-on fingers.

“So is blood.”

Jaskier makes a face. “Oh, yes, terribly arousing, do go on.”

“And sweat.” Geralt works his way back up to Jaskier’s fingers, to the pad of one finger, and Jaskier whimpers. “And sex.”

“By all means, tell me more about how sticky sex is.”

“I would rather show you.”

“You know me,” Jaskier says, trembling all over despite the warmth of the night, and Geralt’s mouth comes to his throat, his teeth a danger that gets Jaskier’s pulse working so much harder than it needs to bother. _White Wolf._ “I’m always up for a good physical demonstration.” He nudges his hips forward so Geralt cannot mistake the stirring between his legs. “Do you see how up I am, Geralt?”

Geralt laughs into his neck, and then they’re kissing, both tasting of dandelion wine and peaches, and Geralt a little bit of Jaskier’s skin. The peach finally falls from his hand, which finds its way to curling at the back of Geralt’s neck. When they break apart, he looks wistfully to where the peach has landed. “I’m never going to finish a peach in this town.”

“I’ll get you another one,” Geralt says, hands beneath Jaskier’s ass to keep him held up while Geralt shifts away from the tree and lays out beneath him.

“Promise?” Jaskier works at his own shirt, determined to have it off.

“I promise,” Geralt says, and tugs him into another kiss.

“Hold you to it,” Jaskier murmurs, cupping Geralt’s face. He’s stretched out atop the witcher, one knee between Geralt’s legs, and it’s almost painful how badly he wants him, how he’s never going to stop wanting him this badly no matter how many times they kiss or fuck or trade I love yous; that Geralt tells him so at all is still a thrill. “Want you.”

Geralt makes a low, rumbling sound, and Jaskier rubs against him.

“Didn’t bring anything,” Jaskier mumbles, cursing himself and his lack of foresight; an extinct flower in his hair and no oil, honestly. Geralt produces a bottle from a pocket and Jaskier grins. “Now aren’t you useful to have around.”

They strip each other without urgency, and when all is said and done, their clothes and boots in a mixed-up heap half a foot away, Jaskier is atop Geralt again, cocks jutting together between them. He’s not worried about being discovered here; Geralt will hear anyone before they come close. Geralt, up on one elbow, uncorks the oil with his teeth and pours a generous amount into Jaskier’s hand. Jaskier begins to reach back to ready himself—he loves the way Geralt’s fingers feel inside him, but if Geralt wants to watch tonight he’s happy to put on a show.

Geralt stops him, catches his slipperied fingers, and Jaskier passes him a puzzled look. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Geralt’s voice is rough gravel, nothing like the lush place they’re in, and Jaskier wouldn’t have it any other way. “I want you to fuck me.”

“You what?” Jaskier blinks, taken aback. “Why?”

Geralt’s eyes crinkle with laughter. “Didn’t know I needed a reason.”

“No,” Jaskier says, “no, you just—took me aback, is all.”

They haven’t done this yet, only talked about it; aside from that first occasion in the bathhouse, Jaskier hasn’t broached the subject, though he has teased at the idea, squeezing Geralt’s ass and dipping his fingers between when Geralt’s cock is buried inside him, and when he’s got the witcher down his throat. He hasn’t been in any hurry to come to this, perfectly happy to sit astride Geralt’s hips, riding his cock with far more enthusiasm than he ever has a horse, or to be held down by all that muscle; besides, they have plenty of time.

And so he takes his time, feathering kisses over Geralt’s inner thighs and belly (firm as the rest of him) and on occasion his leaking cock, catching the head between slick lips and teasing with his tongue only to release him again, oiled fingers skimming from Geralt’s ass to the backs of his thighs before ever slipping into the cleft to trace his opening.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, and it’s not the _word_ yes, but it is the sense of it, and that’s all Jaskier needs to ease his first finger into his lover’s body. He nudges Geralt’s legs wider apart, the hand not presently occupied roaming the hard plane of Geralt’s chest and stomach and rubbing circles on his thigh, and the sound Geralt makes when he fits a second finger inside, crooks them in a way that might mean ‘come here’ if they weren’t pressed up inside Geralt’s body—Jaskier has to bite his tongue, needs the distracting jolt of pain if he doesn’t want this to be embarrassing.

“Have you done this before? Not _this_ , obviously.” He stretches his fingers deeper, and Geralt responds beautifully, back arching and breath stuttering. “But am I your first, like this?”

“What do you think?” Geralt’s eyes open to slits.

“I think I am,” Jaskier says, twisting his fingers and laughing in delight at the way Geralt claws at the ground.

“Jaskier,” he says through his teeth, and his tone might be threatening, if it weren’t threaded through with need. “Jaskier, I don’t need gentleness.”

“Yes, you do.” Jaskier leans over him properly for a long kiss, working a third finger inside. “You, more than anybody, my White Wolf. And you haven’t answered me, if—”

“Yeah.” Geralt’s voice is thick, and Jaskier buries his face in the witcher’s neck, in his hair, his cock achingly hard with the need to push inside, but he doesn’t feel ready, somehow.

“Not yet,” he whispers, more to himself than to Geralt, and Geralt doesn’t push, except with his hips, and his cock, insistent against Jaskier’s stomach. Finally, he pulls his fingers away and nudges his cock inside, and halfway in he stops, and looks; Geralt is beautiful, every last scar on the patchwork of his skin, that vicious seam down his face, fucking _beautiful_ , and he belongs to Jaskier as much as Jaskier belongs to him.

Geralt opens his mouth, but Jaskier beats him to it, says, “I’m honored,” and pushes inside, slowly, not stopping until there’s no more of him to go. He realizes, belatedly, he’s trembling again.

He waits a moment’s time, wanting Geralt adjusted to taking a cock, no matter what he says of gentleness, which of them is the expert on this end, hm; besides, he needs the moment for himself, too. Then he rolls his hips, an easy, languid motion that gets a lovely response from the witcher beneath him.

Jaskier takes him slow, wanting to draw this out as long as he can, for both of them, but especially for Geralt; if he’s the first person to have Geralt this way, he wants to get it right. The clench of Geralt’s body around him is impossibly good, and the way Geralt breathes his name. He groans when Geralt pushes his hips to meet a thrust, drops his eyes to watch the way his cock slides in and out, catches a muscle jumping in Geralt’s stomach.

“Is that good,” he says unnecessarily.

“More,” Geralt says, his hand at the small of Jaskier’s back. “Talk to me.”

“What would you like me to say?” Jaskier meets Geralt’s eyes, presses fully into him and stops like that.

“Anything.” Geralt touches his face, thumb slipping in between his lips, and Jaskier sucks at it, offers a harder thrust at Geralt’s answering groan. “I like your voice.”

“I like everything about you,” Jaskier tells him, and begins to fuck him in earnest, setting a rhythm of even thrusts, slow but deep, hard; he wants this to last for hours, if it could. It’s an effort to concentrate on speech when Geralt’s all around him this way, and Geralt is looking at him with his mouth parted, and Geralt’s fingers are pressing down, still at his back. “I like the way you smile at me and the way you fuck me and how rough your hands are and— _oh_ , that’s it—”

Geralt’s hand slips lower, onto Jaskier’s ass, urges him forward, and Jaskier makes an inarticulate sound.

“Wretched wolf of a man.” Jaskier’s voice shakes and he pulls back, his cock nearly slipping out before he shoves back in, and Geralt makes a sound he’s never made before, a low and desperate thing, and Jaskier has to think about anything else— _ghouls,_ his brain suggests helpfully. He murmurs, “There, darling?” and admires the arch of Geralt’s body as he finds just the right angle again. “The way you feel,” makes Jaskier feel fully aflame, and he reaches between them to get his fingers around Geralt’s cock, “I don’t have the words.”

“Some poet you are,” Geralt says; the way he moves beneath Jaskier is obscene, and his skin is slick with sweat, and Jaskier licks into the dip of his throat, tastes salt and something that reminds him, vividly, of the first time he watched Geralt put his sword through a monster’s throat, and his hips drive harder, and there’s that sound again, the sweetest reward; he moans, soft into Geralt’s skin.

“Hush,” Jaskier says. “I don’t specialize in filth.”

“What do you call The White Wolf’s Magnificent Cock?” Geralt rocks as though to remind Jaskier where his hand is, and there _is_ something to be said for Geralt naming that particular song while Jaskier’s cock is inside him, his fist around Geralt’s leaking cock. He goes still and the sound Geralt makes is all protest.

“I suppose,” Jaskier says slowly, “you do make a fine point.”

And then he smiles, and flicks his thumb over the head of Geralt’s cock, and thrusts—and Geralt shouts. He doesn’t slow this time, doesn’t ease up, just kisses Geralt for a taste of the way he’s moaning, and of course it doesn’t last hours; he tangles his fingers in Geralt’s hair, feels the shock of orgasm roll through him, and follows him over the edge a few unsteady thrusts later.

“Fuck,” he says, easing out before collapsing atop his witcher, who rumbles agreement. “That was…”

Geralt catches his hand, laces their fingers together, wet with Geralt’s spending. “Out of words again already?”

“I was trying to decide between ‘a resounding success’ and ‘adequate,’” Jaskier says breezily, and yelps when Geralt gives his ass a rough pinch. “I fuck you so nicely and this is the thanks I get? You _lout_.” He plants one palm on Geralt’s chest and kisses his laughter away. “Lout,” he repeats, quieter, breath on Geralt’s lips. “ _Honestly_ , I make a fool of myself falling all to pieces over you not one week ago and you think I might want to fuck somebody else, daft man.”

Geralt makes a disgruntled sort of sound. “I just wanted you to know I wouldn’t—”

“ _Hush_ ,” Jaskier says, more emphatically this time. “As—sweet?” His nose crinkles. “—something as it is, I’ve meant it when I said I don’t want anybody else. Do get that into your skull, darling.”

A long moment passes before Geralt says, “You really have a way with words, Dandelion.”

“I _do_ ,” Jaskier says, “but I might need to keep to single syllables for your sake.”

“Syllables?” Geralt echoes, and Jaskier catches the gleam of amusement in his eyes, and snorts before levering himself away.

He slips down to the water and walks in as deep as his ankles; it’s a comfortable temperature, and he stands there, hands dangling at his sides, peering at the statue in the center. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tilts his head back. When he opens his eyes again, Geralt is beside him, fingers splayed on his back.

“Are you going to stop?” Jaskier asks, half-turning toward him. “Being ridiculous, I mean.”

“I don’t think so,” Geralt says, his expression serious, and Jaskier only realizes his mistake as he’s opening his mouth and Geralt is shoving him forward.

Jaskier surfaces a moment later, sputtering. “You _bastard_.”

“Bastard?” Geralt cocks his head, the movement wolfish. “That might be too many, what did you call them, syllables?”

“Do fuck off,” Jaskier says, and hooks a hand around Geralt’s ankle to yank him off-balance. The witcher comes down with a remarkable splash, and reaches for Jaskier when he bursts back out of the water. For a moment they might be wrestling, or hugging, but then they’re mostly kissing, and laughing. Jaskier swipes his tongue over a droplet on Geralt’s jaw. “Supposing,” he says after a while, “we go inside and you—oh, good.”

Geralt’s medallion is pulsing again. Pressed to his chest, Jaskier can feel it. He sighs heavily. “That sort of witcher’s work after all, I suppose. What’s it reacting to?”

He glances about, not sure what he expects to see, but Geralt catches his chin to still him, then plucks the flower from behind his ear. It’s not glowing, exactly; it does appear to be shimmering, and Jaskier feels _something_ from it. He would almost say it’s awake, but it’s a flower for fuck’s sake, flowers don’t _wake up_ ; Jaskier considers his life, the djinn and the witcher he’s spent all these years with, and supposes flowers might wake up after all, who’s he to tell them they can’t.

“Not to state the obvious,” he says, in the interest of stating the obvious, “but that’s new.”

Geralt holds the flower higher, and the shimmering sort of…picks up, Jaskier would say. “Let’s see where it goes,” Geralt says, and tucks the flower into Jaskier’s hand. Jaskier’s eyebrows flick up. “They gave it to you.”

“True enough. If something bursts out of the ground to eat me, I’m going to haunt you.”

“I always knew you would.” Geralt nudges him into motion, and they exit the water, dripping and nude.

The flower begins to make a sound rather in line with its bell-shape as they walk back toward the peach trees. Luckily they haven’t far to walk; he’s not sure how he knows, a sense gleaned from the flower, telling him to stop at one of the trees. Jaskier crouches and brushes rhododendrons and dirt out of the way, his eyes aching from the shimmering, and frowns at the writing he uncovers, set fully into the tree itself.

“Would you look at that,” he says, half to Geralt and half to the flower, but it’s Geralt who joins him on the ground, fingers brushing Jaskier’s in their quest to run along the writing.

The words there are in Elder and Jaskier cannot understand them. That is, he can _read_ them, but they don’t make much sense.

“All my love for a hickory crown of gold,” Geralt says, so close his breath is warm on Jaskier’s ear. “That from a poem?”

“Not one I’ve ever read, and I like to think I’ve read most of them.” Jaskier shakes his head and adds, “The ones worth reading, anyway. It sounds like that story earlier.”

“Hmm.” Geralt’s fingers skim the words again before he lets the rhododendrons fall back into their place.

“Fuck?” Jaskier suggests for him.

* * *

“I suppose nobody here really knows Elder.” It’s morning, and Jaskier is propped up on his elbow. His other hand runs over Geralt’s stomach for the simple pleasure of touching him, of being allowed to touch, any way he likes. He reconsiders. “No, never mind, I think the peach-thief woman knows quite a lot.”

By his thinking, the people of Wyrasta have learned to echo the pieces of Elder that come up in their faire, and no more than that.

“I think that’s true,” Geralt says, a thoughtful crease wrinkling his brow.

Jaskier ventures, “I also think she’s the wraith,” and is relieved when Geralt doesn’t laugh at him, just gives him a considering look.

“What makes you think so?”

“The flowers,” Jaskier says promptly.

“You and the flowers,” Geralt says, and it would be grousing if it didn’t sound so resignedly fond.

“The flowers are important,” Jaskier insists, crawling properly atop Geralt to straddle his waist, his hands light on Geralt’s chest. “That wraith was part made up of aspen leaves, and when that woman,” he pauses here, wondering if woman is entirely the right word for her after all, “took my peach, there were aspen leaves falling out of her dress. Also, I’ve thought the plants here were strange from the start, and not only because Isolde’s tears are extinct.”

Geralt rubs strands of Jaskier’s hair between his fingers. “You’re the expert. Tell me what’s strange about them.”

“Oh, nothing much.” Jaskier clears his throat and puts on his best ‘lecturing at Oxenfurt’ voice. “There were daisies around a yew tree; daisies are for innocence, and yew is usually,” his lips twitch, and then he puts on a dramatic, woebegone sort of expression, “sorrow. There was the dogsbane, for deceit, growing among the white periwinkle, and that’s pleasures of memory. They’ve got marigolds and mugwort together, and one means grief while the other’s for happiness, a bit of a disagreement there, I think.”

“You’ve been paying attention,” Geralt says, and Jaskier feels like he’s glowing from the inside out.

“I’m not finished, and interrupting’s not tolerated,” Jaskier admonishes.

Geralt tugs at the hair he’s still playing with. “Yes, Professor Pankratz.”

“Oh, I like that, we’ll need to come back to that,” Jaskier says. “Now, where was I?”

“Marigolds and mugwort.”

“Right.” Jaskier stresses the t. He pulls one hand from Geralt’s chest and begins ticking things off on his fingers. “I’ve seen honeysuckle, camellias, celandine, hydrangeas, and ivy, which are for devoted affection, loveliness, joys to come, heartlessness, and fidelity, in that order.” Here he runs out of fingers, blows out a breath, and drops his hand. “Also sweet pea, which can be delicate pleasures _or_ departure, got to be careful with that one, and I do wonder if it means both here. And I’m still not finished, so don’t you dare.”

One side of Geralt’s mouth quirks.

“Don’t you smirk at me, either, Geralt of Rivia,” Jaskier says, punctuating it by tweaking a nipple. “Where Ellia and I were last night, that was all covered in forget-me-nots, which mean what you’d expect, and aspen leaves, for lamentation, and peach blossoms, and those suggest captivity. They’ve got a spindle tree there, and I’ve always liked those, they mean your charms are engraven on my heart, and the yellow lillies and dragonplant—you might call it catchfly? I don’t know what they teach witchers—are for falsehood or gaiety, and for snaring.

“And let’s not forget,” he concludes, “the wraith itself, which was more aspen leaves and peach blossoms, along with yellow acacia, and those mean secret love.” He says, more slowly, “If I didn’t know any better, I would think the land is growing itself emotionally.”

The peach-thief woman’s voice streams through his mind. _The land—which often considered itself hers, and did so with pride._

“Do you think that’s silly?” Jaskier asks, because he thinks so, a little bit.

But Geralt says, “No more silly than a nonsense wish for a bard to be one of the stars.”

“Well, when you put it like that. And do you think…what _do_ you think?”

“I think something is here is keeping this town the way it is,” Geralt says, “and I think that something is keeping the wraith here too.”

“Down to the roots,” Jaskier murmurs, without thinking what he might mean by it. Only, then he _does_ think about it and a frown pulls at his mouth. “You don’t think, if we—if you handle whatever it is we’re talking about, it’ll have some sort of effect on the town? If it’s all connected, would that, I dunno, ruin their peach trees or something?”

The way his heart speeds at Geralt’s smile is outrageous, embarrassing behavior on its part.

“That’s a good thought.”

“Yes, well, I don’t mean to have them often, so you’d best enjoy this one while it lasts.”

Geralt’s laughter reverberates in his chest and Jaskier imagines he can feel it all the way through his bones, though of course that’s nonsense. But maybe it’s not. Maybe there’s something down to _his_ roots, too. Song and star stuff and this man. Geralt leans in and kisses him, slow and sweet and toe-curling, and after, Jaskier says, in the tones of a man walking to the gallows, “You’re about to make me get out of bed, I know it, and I may never forgive you for it.”

“Yes, you will,” Geralt says.

Jaskier presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Damn you, yes I will.”

He heaves himself out of bed before he can persuade himself to do otherwise, and dresses for the day in shades of blue and green that feel appropriate. He’s fastening his breeches when he says, “What is it we’re doing, exactly?”

“Looking for more Elder.” Geralt is considering his swords, which seems like nonsense for dealing with flowers; Jaskier’s mind takes the opportunity to conjure up visions of flower petals soaked in blood, surrounding people in little whirl-storms and cutting them all to ribbons, and it’s as unsettling as it is laughable. “We heard the story of Wyrasta. I think that version was missing something.”

“Undoubtedly,” Jaskier agrees. “How much do you suppose it matters? The wraith isn’t hurting anything, or Ellia wouldn’t have been so calm about it. Is it anything to worry about?”

“I don’t think it’s going to hurt anyone,” Geralt says, “but that’s not the only kind of worry.”

Ah. So it’s like that, then.

Jaskier smiles, somewhat soppily, at Geralt’s back; he doesn’t often sing of Geralt’s kindness, because that’s not what people like to hear, but Geralt is a kind man, just a kind man who hides it beneath scowls and grumbling.

“I suppose you're right.” Jaskier takes easy steps forward and sets a hand at the small of Geralt’s back. “But you didn’t answer my other question. What you’re trying to do, is it going to…wilt Wyrasta? I shouldn’t like to write that song. It’s a beautiful town, cryptic flower placement notwithstanding.”

“I don’t think so.” Geralt turns away from his swords without taking either, which is reassuring as to what sort of day this is going to be. “You said it yourself. Down to the roots. The magic keeping this place so fertile is probably a part of the land itself.”

“That’s good,” Jaskier says, relieved. He fetches the Isolde’s tear from its place on the table. It shows no signs of fading, no matter he’s been carrying it around for an entire day; it might have been cut from its bush mere minutes ago. Part of the magic, he assumes.

The town is largely empty at this early hour, aside from a boy attending to horses and a young woman guiding a group of sheep too few in number for Jaskier to qualify them as a herd; the sheep dog seems to agree. The woman is rubbing at her head, her eyes squinting, but she gives them a wave as their paths cross.

“I don’t know how this worked last night,” Jaskier says when they’re out of earshot, indicating the flower, tucked again behind his ear.

“I have an idea,” Geralt says, yellow eyes at their most wolfish, and Jaskier feels a prickling of something that could be fear, but is arousal instead. “It was after we finished, that it woke up.”

“Are you proposing we should fuck?” Jaskier grins. “I’m not opposed to it, but we might have stayed it bed.”

“I was thinking I should shove you into the water again.”

Jaskier’s shoulders sag, but then Geralt pulls him into the nearest tree, a long-hanging cypress that hides them from sight, and then Geralt is kissing him, sweet and he’d almost say gentlemanly, and he has no complaints. His arms go around Geralt’s shoulders, his tongue teasing against Geralt’s, the taste of strawberry jam on both of them, and when they break apart the flower is awake again, the medallion pulsing between them.

“Very clever,” Jaskier says, his voice hoarse.

Geralt takes his hand, kisses along his knuckles, and says, “I love you,” and pulls him away from the tree before he can react.

Jaskier bristles. “That wasn’t fair, you can’t just be that sweet and then expect me to focus—”

“Good thing it’s the flower telling us where to go then.”

“Lout,” Jaskier grumbles.

Wyrasta returns to life around them over the hours. On occasion the flower fades, and there’s a flurrying of kisses and laughter, and Jaskier thinks this is just the sort of thing that would make an excellent ballad, only he doesn’t want to share it with anybody aside from Geralt, and if this keeps happening he’s rather going to lose his shine as a bard, isn’t he. One cannot make a living off of singing only for a lover, unless that lover is also a wealthy patron, and Geralt is hardly that. (Jaskier did have one, once, but it had ended with a hairbrush flung as his head and some particularly rude comments regarding the lady’s brother being superior in bed; he’d have sent an apology, albeit an insincere one, if not for the hairbrush.)

There are eight patches of Elder hidden throughout the town, aside from the first. Buried in a flower bed, carved into a stone near the heart tree, written into the petals of a snapdragon, each one of them perfectly nonsense. _The queen of wilds mourned for the king of dirt. Gifts for queens are living. Intertwine and out of love. Soil is magic and flowerbound. Tears of queens make crowns for kings. On my island of stone and bone._

“I hope this makes more sense to you than it does to me,” Jaskier says, leaning against a tree while Geralt pushes dirt over the last.

“None.” Geralt straightens.

“Perfect.” Jaskier takes a hopeful look about them; there’s been no sign of the peach-thief woman today, nor her caped ducklings, and he’d dearly love to ask her what, pray tell, the hell is going on here. What he does see is Ellia approaching, and he waves.

“Master Dandelion,” she says, with a somewhat abashed look toward Geralt, “we’re supposed to dedicate our flowers now.”

“How do you mean, dedicate?” Jaskier pushes a hand through his hair, catching the flower along the way and balancing it between his fingers.

Ellia worries at her lower lip, thoughtful. Probably the flowers usually find their way to people who live here, who don’t need an explanation. “You think of where it needs to go. What you think should be done with it.”

“Where it needs to go,” Jaskier echoes, his mind littered with the Elder patches they’ve unearthed. “Right. Is that—is there a ceremony, do we have to do it together?”

It comes as a relief when the answer is no, to both questions, and Ellia goes away again.

“Do you know,” he says, “I think I might understand.”

“Do you?” Geralt looks taken aback.

“Gifts for queens,” Jaskier says. “We’ve got a peach-thief woman to see. I think I know where to find her now.”

Geralt doesn’t ask how, just follows him to the lake. Jaskier takes a longer route than necessary, stopping here and there to pick a flower. He is relieved, again, when they come to the lake and there is a rowboat tied to a post. He settles himself into it, with Geralt opposite, and Geralt rows them out to the island. Some distance away, Ellia is tossing her flower into the lake, Tuomas by her side; the flower stays at the surface for a long time, sinking only when Jaskier is climbing out of the rowboat.

Jaskier examines the statue. This close, the wear on her is obvious, the weather having grooved into her arms and hair; he thinks it adds character.

When he turns away from the statue, the peach-thief woman is sitting there, toes stretched into the water, her hair a windblown mess; there are aspen leaves and acacia blossoms in the tangled mess. Her dress is falling off of her shoulder, peach blossoms visible, and her lips are wet with juice from a peach in her hand.

“Hello, thief of peaches,” Jaskier says.

The peach-thief woman, who is also a wraith and was also a queen of the wilds, laughs. “I’ve never been called that before.”

“Fitting shoes.” Jaskier considers her. “But you’re not wearing any, forget I said anything.”

“Are you here to give that to me?” She jerks her chin toward the Isolde’s tear in his hand.

Jaskier swallows. “I suppose I am.”

“And what of the rest of them?” The flowers he’d collected along the way, wrapped around his wrist and tucked into his pocket.

“Those aren’t for you.”

The woman nods. She takes another bite of her peach, gives it a rueful little smile. “In your own time then.”

Jaskier sits down beside her. Geralt is out of the rowboat now, has its rope tied around a stone, but he’s not saying anything. Probably he’s not supposed to. The medallion is pulsing. Jaskier asks, “How long have you been here?”

The peach-thief, wraith, and queen, studies her peach. “How long is time, Dandelion?”

“That’s…that’s a long time,” Jaskier says, and wants to take it back, but the woman gives him another smile like they’re sharing a secret; they are, of course.

“It is.”

“The story you tell isn’t true, is it?”

“No.” She takes another bite of her peach. “But they like to believe it.”

“And neither is the ballad about Isolde’s tears?”

“No, that’s not the truth either.”

“But we do like to sing it. Will you tell me what is the truth?”

“No,” she says again. “No, that’s mine.”

“Ah.” Jaskier pauses. “How will all this go on without you? You seem somewhat integral to…” He waves toward the opposite short. “Tradition.”

“They’ll manage.” The woman who seems more peach-thief than queen or wraith grazes her fingers into the water. “I’m very tired, Dandelion.”

“I imagine you are.”

They sit with only the wind and the water for sound for another minute before Jaskier stands again. The peach-thief woman says nothing. Jaskier faces the statue and touches her face, carved, he thinks, from stone and something more. _Stone and bone, and hickory._ He steps in close to her, whispers the Elder, “All my love for a hickory crown of gold,” into her stone ear, and slips the flower into her open stone palm.

Jaskier has experienced magic aplenty at Geralt’s side, but what rushes through his body now is different from anything he’s ever felt. It’s warm, and there is the oddest sensation of growing, like sprouting in his veins, and then he doubles over, coughing flower petals. Marigold, mugwort, peach blossom.

Geralt is there to catch him when he half-falls backward, breath coming ragged, tears stinging at his eyes. “She’s gone,” Geralt says into his ear.

So she is. There’s only a half-eaten peach to say she was ever there. This, Jaskier sets at the foot of the statue before Geralt helps him back into the rowboat.

When they’ve returned the rowboat to its proper place, Jaskier pulls Geralt to sit with him beneath the peach tree from last night. He settles himself behind the witcher, where he can pull his fingers through Geralt’s hair. It’s been a few days since he’s properly worked through the snarls in it; Geralt’s got such lovely hair, and Jaskier doesn’t know how, the way he neglects it. It’s a miracle the white isn’t permanently stained with monster guts.

They sit together in silence for a long time while Jaskier braids his chosen plants into Geralt’s hair. Purple and pink and green.

“Tell me what they mean,” Geralt says when he’s finished, and his chin is on the witcher’s shoulder.

“Aconite,” Jaskier says, touching the purple flower in question, “also called wolf’s bane, means misanthropy.”

“I’m touched.”

“You will be when the sun’s down,” Jaskier promises, and dances his fingers to the pink. “Dog rose.”

Geralt’s voice is flat. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Well, yes, but it does mean pleasure and pain, I thought it was fitting.”

“And the other? Wolf flower? Dogwood?”

“It’s only holly, Geralt, you know that. It means enchantment. I would have gotten you crab apple blossoms for your ill nature, but I didn’t see any.”

“And what does primrose mean?”

“I cannot live without you,” Jaskier says, blinking, “but I haven’t gotten you—oh.” He stops, noticing the flower in Geralt’s own hand. “Oh, you absolute—”

“Lucky guess,” Geralt says, and Jaskier bites his tongue to stop himself from swearing.

“One moment. Don’t move.” Jaskier crawls around until he’s better positioned to throw himself at Geralt, and then does so with the full weight of an overexcited bard.

“I couldn’t bring you the spindle tree.” Geralt slides the primrose into his hair. “I was hoping for the best.”

“I’m sure you could have managed if you put your back into it.”

“Not without someone noticing.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Jaskier says, and kisses him. “I think I’ll keep you.”

“Do you think so?” Geralt catches his chin, meets his eyes. “That’s a relief.”

“I’m sure it is.”

Geralt swats at his ass, and Jaskier laughs, kisses him again. “I’m yours— _only_ yours, lout—as long as you’ll have me.”

“That’s going to be a long time.”

“I should hope so.” Jaskier rolls off of him, and though his lute is in their room, he sings about flowers and wolves and sweet summer peaches; he might even sing this one for others later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was primarily to fill a request from CBlue for something involving flower language; it took a few months, but I got it done in the end!


	6. starving, still

Geralt’s fingers are numb. Have been for the better part of an hour, owing to the pounding, icy rain. If he’d known it was coming he would have stopped them in the last village they passed through. He hadn’t liked the look of the place, something off in the smell, and the way people had looked not at him, but at Jaskier, nasty smiles while they ate their dinner—no, they hadn’t stayed there. Maybe they should have. He could manage a night without sleep.

At this rate, his night might be a sleepless one anyway.

He’s leading Roach on foot, his hand locked into claw-like position around the reins. They’re deep in the trees, and the ground is slippery enough he doesn’t want to chance the mare losing her footing. Jaskier is silent and hunched on her back, his arms locked around his lute like he might be able to protect it from the deluge. He’d chattered away as animatedly as ever when the rain started, but he’s been silent for a long time now.

Soon, Geralt wants to promise him, but he doesn’t know where they are.

Lightning brightens the night even through the thick canopy above, for bare seconds. Geralt smells ozone before the crack of thunder. Compass nickers uneasily, falling back a step, his head shooting up.

Jaskier cranes around almost mechanically, flicking a scowl toward the sky. “You’re fine,” he says, his tone irritated, but his eyes fond. “I can’t come ride with you, beast, I’m fused by cold to Roach here.”

Compass whuffs out through his nose like he’s understood every word. Geralt almost wouldn’t be surprised to learn he does. He’d expected the second horse to run away long before now, when faced with one of the monsters he hunts, Compass has conducted himself more than respectably in the face of alghouls and noonwraiths; and he seems attached to Jaskier, and Jaskier attached in return, though he pulls faces to pretend he’s not, complaining noisily when Compass lips at his hair or noses at him seeking a scratch on the nose.

Geralt hasn’t laughed at him yet, but it’s a close thing.

“We’ll find a place soon,” Geralt says, and Jaskier looks doubtfully at the surrounding forest.

“Will we?”

Geralt doesn’t answer.

They walk on another mile, at least, before the trees part to reveal a stone wall, some twenty or thirty feet tall. Geralt gives it an appraising look through the dark. There are notches enough that he could easily scale it, but the same can’t be said for Jaskier, never mind the horses.

“What do you suppose this is?” Jaskier raises his voice to be heard over the downpour, which has only gotten worse. He leans forward too, so his mouth is near Geralt’s ear. His breath is warm, the first heat Geralt has felt in an age, and it makes him shiver.

“I don’t know,” Geralt says, “but we’re going to find out.”

“Let’s hope it has a roof somewhere, yes? And that nobody wants to fight you for it.”

Geralt doesn’t know one way from the other here, and so he chooses a direction at random, navigating Roach to the left. The mud clings to his boots, tries to suck them from his feet, and Roach snorts impatience when it does the same to her hooves. They come around to a gate, after a time. It’s rusted with age and lack of use, and gives under Geralt’s hard kick with a protesting screech that makes Compass throw his head up again.

“Did we know there was a castle here?” Jaskier asks; he says it idly despite the rain, like he’s already piecing together lyrics about the place.

“We didn’t,” Geralt says, scenting the air. There’s nothing living aside from the familiarity of the horses and Jaskier. There hasn’t been for a long time, the life long since washed away from this place. Nothing dead—nor undead—either. Geralt gives the castle a once-over; like any castle worth the word, it stands tall in the dark, not as proud as it must have been, once. There’s a stable, but he can taste the wood from here, the rot and weakness in it, and thinks he’d better not put the horses there. One unhappy kick and it’s likely to come crashing down on their heads.

“Right,” Jaskier says, reflective, pushing his hair from his eyes and peering at the structure. After a moment’s consideration, he announces, “It looks haunted.”

“It looks _dry_ ,” Geralt rejoins.

“Does it?” Jaskier cocks an eyebrow. “You don’t think the roof is mostly holes?”

“I didn’t plan to sleep on the top floor.”

The main door to the castle is shut tight; Geralt considers using aard, but wants the thing to close again once they’re inside. He heaves with his shoulder until it swings inward, then leads Roach and Compass in. The hall is predictably pitch black, and the air tastes of must and mold and something sour. Roach stamps impatiently at the ground.

“Hello,” Jaskier calls; there’s an echo to it, bouncing along the hallways. “Anybody home?”

“There’s nobody here,” Geralt says, and Jaskier slides down from Roach’s back. His legs give way when he touches the ground, and he’s just begun to stumble when Geralt catches him with both arms.

“I can’t feel my anything,” Jaskier says, confidentially, into Geralt’s chest. “I think I’d like to sit inside a fire.”

“You’ll settle for near a fire.”

“Will I?”

Geralt helps him to the nearest wall, dragging more than anything, and lowers him to the floor. “I’m putting the horses up—”

“Putting them up _where_?”

“Anywhere,” Geralt says, “I don’t think the ghosts are going to put up a fuss.”

“I thought ghosts loved to put up a fuss.” Jaskier’s eyes are closed, water trickling from his hair down the curve of his face. Geralt runs a finger through it, frowns at how cold the bard’s skin is. “Rattling chains and wailing and all that. It’s in all the stories.”

“Then let them.” Geralt grunts, straightens up to rifle through their belongings for a torch, which he lights before offering to Jaskier. Then he clucks his tongue for Roach to follow him, and makes his way down the hall, eight hooves plodding steadily after him while he looks for a suitable room. There’s nothing perfect, the floors hard and lacking in straw, but better to have them in here than out in that deathtrap corpse of a barn. He finds a room that will do, the floor littered with nothing but clothing scraps, nothing the horses are likely to hurt themselves on.

He takes his time in seeing to them, propping the saddles against the wall for lack of a saddle rack, but he brings the bridles to the hall, not wanting to chance legs and tangling. He carries their saddlebags and the bulk of Compass’ load into the hall as well, returning with rags that usually go to cleaning up his own blood to wipe the pair down. They stamp impatiently throughout, Roach more than Compass, who seems as easygoing as Jaskier, while Roach shares more of Geralt’s temper; the thought nearly makes him smile. He brings part of their stores of oats and hay; tomorrow, when the weather improves, he’ll take them out to graze in the overgrown castle yard.

When he’s sure they’ll be all right, he slings one bag over his shoulder, and returns to where he left Jaskier.

Jaskier isn’t there. Geralt frowns, casting a look about the darkened hallway. There’s no obvious torchlight; he goes deeper down the hall than he had before, calling, “Dandelion?” as he goes, not bothering to quiet himself. There’s nothing here. Nothing he needs to worry about, aside from Jaskier falling through a weak spot in the floor; he would, of course, and so Geralt does need to worry. He’d have heard a crash, no matter how occupied with the horses, but…

“Here,” Jaskier calls back, his voice echoing against stone as before so that it takes Geralt a moment to pin down just where he’s calling from. His eyes find the cast of light from a room around the corner.

This room is in a similar state to others he explored while looking for a place to bed down the horses. There are two beds, of a size that would fit both of them, if they were very determined. Given the smell of them, Geralt thinks they’d best not sleep on one.

Jaskier is at the window, the torch slipped into a wall sconce to his right, his fingers on the glass. His eyes meet Geralt’s in the reflection; Geralt can see him shivering. Lightning flashes just as Jaskier turns to face him, and for a moment Geralt thinks he sees movement outside, something silver and faded, and gone as fast as he imagines it there. He _is_ imagining it there. His medallion hasn’t reacted to a thing, and neither have his own senses.

“The fireplace is clear,” Jaskier says with a nod.

“In a minute. You’re going to catch a chill,” Geralt says, his hands going to Jaskier’s shirtfront. The bard’s clothes cling to him, and if they hadn’t been plodding along in torrential rainfall for such a long time, Geralt might appreciate the look of it. Things being as they are, he doesn’t like the idea of Jaskier falling ill when they’re some distance from the nearest settlement with a likely medic.

Jaskier smiles at him, as pretty a sight as ever it has been, and Geralt thinks to kiss him; Geralt _does_ kiss him, because he can, because Jaskier welcomes it with arms wound about Geralt’s neck, and Geralt had never dared to dream he should be so lucky, before that night in Oxenfurt. He would have been content to keep the bard with him on his travels, watching him go to bed with others, and going to bed with others himself to stave off the wanting, never learning the feeling of Jaskier’s stomach beneath his fingertips, or the way his lips part when he’s being fucked, or the way he looks at Geralt after a good kiss.

He’s looking at him that way now, as Geralt draws back, like he’s learned some secret other bards would kill to get their hands on. Geralt thinks he knows the feeling, if in a somewhat different way.

“I don’t have to catch a chill,” Jaskier says, his eyes dancing with mischief. “You could warm me up. You’re very good at that.”

“I’ll build a fire as soon as you’re out of your clothes,” Geralt tells him, knowing it will earn him a laugh, and it does, bright and clear; he loves Jaskier’s laugh, loves the musicality of it and the crinkling at his eyes.

“I don’t think that’s proper fire safety, do you?”

“Never mind.” Geralt begins the process of divesting Jaskier from his clothes, then; there’s far more peeling involved than usual, and Jaskier’s skin feels like ice under his hands. Geralt’s probably isn’t much better. He’s careful with igni, just warming his hands before ghosting them over Jaskier’s skin, feeling the shiver in him, watching him turn half to gooseflesh. Circumstances aside, every inch of exposed skin still feels a little like a miracle. A gift he’s not meant to receive.

It’s an effort to pull the boots from Jaskier’s feet, the stockings from beneath, and he runs his fingertip along the underside of Jaskier’s foot, listens to his yelp of protest. Ticklish. Geralt has taken advantage of it more than once during their play, appreciates the way it makes Jaskier jump and writhe. “So you can feel your feet again,” he says into Jaskier’s stomach, lips catching stray water droplets.

“Want to know what I can’t feel yet?” Jaskier asks, practically shimmying, and he probably means it to be suggestive, but Geralt finds it absurd, and charming.

“I can guess.” Geralt tugs Jaskier’s trousers down his thighs. His touch is, dare he think it, reverent, because Jaskier is—Jaskier is not something he deserves. He hasn’t earned that easy smile, nor the fingers in his hair, and definitely not the absolute faith Jaskier places in him. He wouldn’t trade it away for anything the world has to offer.

He presses a kiss to the inside of Jaskier’s thigh, his lips lingering there. His own eyes are closed, so that all he knows is the smell of Jaskier and rain, and the weight of Jaskier’s hand on his shoulder, until Jaskier says, “As nice as this is, I thought we were going to warm up? _You_ _’re_ still soaked, love.”

Geralt huffs a laugh into Jaskier’s skin even as his heart twinges at being called _love_ , doesn’t matter how many times Jaskier’s said it, or called him darling, or kissed him with all the sweetness of a spring day. He presses a kiss to that thigh, with chapped, clumsy lips, before lifting his head to meet Jaskier’s eyes, which are bright with interest and amusement, and Geralt doesn’t believe he deserves that, either. But that hasn’t stopped Jaskier giving it to him.

“Come here, would you,” Jaskier says, squirming and urging Geralt to his feet. He pushes him so his back is to the wall in Jaskier’s place. Geralt is stripped first of his shirt, Jaskier’s fingers dancing along his chest, lingering on scars with which the bard has grown intimately familiar, through kisses here and there. It’s the rest of his clothing after that, and then they’re stood naked together in an empty castle, Jaskier leaned in with his forehead on Geralt’s collarbone, and Geralt’s hand at Jaskier’s hip. It’s a comfortable position, but the chill in the air renders it less so, never mind the frozen glass to his back.

“You were going to warm me up,” Jaskier murmurs, one hand wandered suggestive between Geralt’s legs.

Geralt plucks that hand away, not for lack of interest, but because one of them has to be responsible, no matter the laughing, twinkle-eyed pout it earns him.

He feels no compunction about kicking the age-warped furniture properly to kindling and piling it together. He sparks it to life with igni and draws Jaskier near again.

Their bedrolls have fared well enough, packed near to the bottom and so avoiding the absolute worst of the weather’s assault. It doesn’t take long for them to dry completely, for Geralt and Jaskier to lay down upon them, nestled together beneath blankets. Jaskier burrows in close as can be, his mouth finding Geralt’s in the firelight. Geralt couldn’t say, if asked, how it is he comes to be atop Jaskier, one hand cradling his neck; Jaskier’s hair is only a little damp now, and he’s got one ankle hooked around the back of Geralt’s knee while Geralt runs the pads of his fingers along Jaskier’s skin, his ribcage and hip and thigh. They couldn’t be more different, between them; Geralt’s skin is rough and battle-worn, marked over and over by the monsters he hunts, while Jaskier is soft, a bit round, and dotted by the occasional freckle. Geralt sometimes draws them together like constellations, as though Jaskier is his own little sky, and Jaskier only squirms a little when he does.

Geralt is still waiting for something to come of that wish he made. It had been his only thought, with the djinn and Yennefer like to destroy more than just the mayor’s house between them if left unchecked; there was Jaskier, and there were stars, and one was like the other and the djinn seemed satisfied.

Every so often, he catches, or thinks he catches, a hint of something about Jaskier, a scent or shimmering in the air, and those times he wonders, but it never comes to anything, and Jaskier is the same as ever he has been.

Now Geralt presses close, his fingers closing on Jaskier’s thigh. “What can you feel now, Dandelion?”

“Everything,” Jaskier says, his hips shifting as though to make his point. One hand worms between them and Geralt releases his thigh to catch it, and Jaskier breathes a laugh. “All of me, and all of you.”

It doesn’t take much of Jaskier’s wiggling for Geralt to stir, and he kisses him as he does, nudging himself against Jaskier, who’s as hard as he is. Geralt’s hand is still tangled with Jaskier’s, so he brings them together, wrapped around both of them, and when Geralt draws back from the kiss it’s to watch the way Jaskier’s lips are parted, the color bright and dark on previously pale cheeks, and Jaskier blushes all the way down to his collarbones, and Geralt kisses him there when he spills into their fingers, onto their stomachs. It’s not long for Jaskier to follow him over, his eyes fluttering with it.

Then Jaskier opens his eyes, and that smile can only be described as lascivious, might fall into leering, but his tone is perfectly conversational on, “Made a bit of a mess, wouldn’t you say so, darling?” He draws their hands up, still tangled together, and Geralt doesn’t think he draws breath, himself, the entire time Jaskier is laving their fingers clean. His mouth is pink and perfect, glistening wet and dangerous in its own way, and without another word, he’s disappearing beneath the blankets, and Geralt expects the lips and tongue on his stomach, but it may kill him yet.

He gets a hand into Jaskier’s hair, fisting but not directing, and Jaskier’s laughter is muffled by blankets and into skin. When he emerges, it’s with a look of utmost satisfaction on his face, the cat that got the cream, and he tastes of both of them.

“You’re impossible,” Geralt says, allowing Jaskier to arrange them as he likes.

“You wouldn’t have me any other way,” comes the easy reply.

“No.” But Geralt’s no good with words, and he doesn’t know how to explain that when he says Jaskier is impossible, he means—he means so much _more_ than Jaskier hears. Geralt’s trade is monsters and magic and myth, and that Jaskier should want him, should look at him that way, should be here with him at all, is the most impossible thing the world has to offer.

They sleep together in a tangle, Geralt’s nose tucked into Jaskier’s hair, where he smells of rain and something sweet that Geralt has never placed.

Geralt stirs, once, some hours into the night, when the fire has gotten low and Jaskier pressed impossibly nearer to him, seeking the additional heat of him. Jaskier’s breathing is steady on his chest. He’s perfectly asleep. Geralt remains still, uncertain what’s disturbed him. He closes his eyes again to better listen, and there—a scuffing footstep in the hallway, a giggle, and another, two voices at least.

Geralt does not call, “Who’s there?”

Neither does he go back to sleep for a long time. He closes his arms around Jaskier’s shoulders and breathes him in while his medallion reacts dimly against his chest, as though it is sleepy too.

* * *

Come morning, sunlight streams through the window without any curtains to keep it out. That’s not entirely right—there _are_ curtains, only worn away so thoroughly by time and moths their contribution is nullified. The fire has burned out altogether. Geralt moves, hardly an inch, and Jaskier makes an emphatic sound of protest into his chest, so Geralt doesn’t press the issue a while longer.

Eventually though, he says, “Jaskier,” his voice soft, rough with morning disuse. “The horses are waiting.” Jaskier makes another sound, this one greatly put-upon, and Geralt has nothing but to laugh at him for that head to lift, hair askew and eyes bleary with sleep.

“Sod the horses,” he mumbles, those eyes going from Geralt’s face to the room about them before his mouth pulls into a frown. He stretches as he sits up, the blankets falling away to expose all of him. “Thought maybe I’d dreamed this place up. You’re sure we didn’t know it was here?”

“I’m sure.” Geralt rests a hand on Jaskier’s knee, propping himself up on his elbows. He aches, but he’s slept in worse places, gone to sleep battered and bruised and woken up much direr than this, and every morning waking up with Jaskier feels a little bit like a miracle, especially when Jaskier leans in and kisses him; that’s another thing he doesn’t know how to put into the right words, but he thinks Jaskier knows, thinks he has to know, the way Geralt brings their fingers together, the way he drags him closer.

Fuck, he hopes Jaskier knows.

They make it to their feet some moments later, and Geralt finds the clothes he’d been wearing dry enough. He slips back into the breeches and leaves Jaskier here to his own devices while he attends to the horses. The castle grounds look little better in the light of day; Geralt wonders how long it’s been since anybody visited this place. There’s a dolly on the ground, beaten all to hell by time and weather, and Roach lips at the old thing before snorting and turning her attention to the grass.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Geralt says, and Roach snorts as though to say he doesn’t need to tell _her_ that.

Geralt returns to the room he and Jaskier camped in to find Jaskier having dug through their food stores and coaxed a small flame back to life. He watches from the doorway, listens to Jaskier humming to himself (The White Wolf’s Magnificent…he represses a snort) while fiddling with a few sausages, and then Jaskier says, “How long do you mean to lurk, darling wolf?”

“You’re getting better at listening.” Geralt crosses the floor; his feet are bare and soundless on the stone.

Jaskier shakes his head. He’s got the sausages speared and turning over the fire. “I was guessing. Would have been awfully embarrassing if you’d turned up halfway through. How long are we staying here?”

“I want to look around.” Geralt runs a hand up Jaskier’s back, appreciating the way the bard shivers at his touch. All that time spent waiting, he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop appreciating it.

But _waiting_ isn’t the right word. Waiting suggests he expected anything.

Loving Jaskier had come on slowly, day by day and night by night, until the sight of blood on his lips brought it crashing over him all at once, the most intense feeling he’d ever known, and he’d never realized a thing could feel so right and so terrifying; he’d learned it a second time when Jaskier kissed him that night in Oxenfurt. It feels like coming home, the only home he’s ever known, Kaer Morhen notwithstanding, because that’s a home to him as a witcher, and Jaskier is—

Jaskier might have the words for it, if Geralt knew how to ask for them.

“I thought you might,” Jaskier says, not turning his attention from his breakfast.

They eat, and Jaskier slips into his own dried clothes, and they set off together through the castle. It’s an odd place. If Geralt were to guess, it has been decades empty, and he wonders why nobody else has come to lay claim to it, whoever the previous masters may have been. He wonders, as well, about the toys scattered here and there. There are no human remains, and for that he is grateful. Every so often he catches a whiff of something like magic; it has its own smell, distinct to the source, but always with wild sameness, he’d tried explaining it to Yennefer once, and she’d no idea what he was talking about.

On the second floor they come to a library, the doors hanging off their hinges, and it has seen better days as much as any other room in this place, but there are plenty of pages intact. This room catches Jaskier’s fancy, the way places with pages often do, because sometimes there are songs to be found among them.

Geralt busies himself looking through a desk, where he finds correspondence from a Philippa and a Keira. There are no dates, but going on the rulers named, it’s been here for more than a century.

They’ve been in the library, occupied with their own thoughts and pages—each time he looks up it’s to find Jaskier with his brow furrowed or his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration, his finger following the words on a page—for near to an hour when a scent almost as familiar as Jaskier’s catches him. Lilacs and gooseberries. He thinks he must be mistaken, but when he raises his head, Yennefer stands in the doorway, face impassive as she looks between them.

“I suppose both horses answer to Roach,” she says.

“No.” Jaskier’s voice is short. “The dappled is Compass.”

“Yen,” Geralt says, and the look on Jaskier’s face is distaste and something else, something that makes Yennefer laugh and say, “Ah.”

“What do you mean _ah_?”

“Don’t be tiresome.” Yennefer steps deeper into the room, her nose wrinkling.

“ _Tiresome_?” Jaskier echoes, taken aback and offended, and then he stalks past her, and Geralt wants to follow him, but the set of Jaskier’s shoulders makes him stop, makes him turn instead to Yennefer, who brings a hand to his cheek and says, “I did wonder.”

“Wonder what?” Geralt doesn’t trouble to remove her hand. Her nails are lacquered in a purple that makes him think of midnight.

“You said you wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t,” Geralt says. They’d had that conversation only once. It had been late, and Jaskier had gone off to bed, a smiling man on his arm, and he hadn’t meant to watch so closely, not while Jaskier was singing and not then. Yennefer had met his eyes over her drink and said, _Does he know?_ “Jaskier did.”

Yennefer looks surprised at this, but the expression clears quickly. “Are you happy?”

Geralt’s mouth feels suddenly dry. They hadn’t been happy together, himself and Yennefer; it wasn’t only that he was in love with Jaskier all the while, it wasn’t only that Yennefer desperately wanted the children neither of them were able to have, it wasn’t only that the affection they felt for each other was never quite the same, but it was in part all of that, and it was more. It wasn’t anybody’s _fault_ ; there’s still a part of him that feels guilty.

There’s an understanding in Yennefer’s eyes when he says, “I didn’t know I could be.”

“I am glad for you, Geralt,” she says, and Geralt exhales as her hand falls from his face. “I might even be pleased for the bard.” Her attention turns to the library. “How did you come here?”

“The weather drove us inside last night.” Geralt takes a step back; he wonders where Jaskier’s gone, if he should be worried about those weak floors, or whatever disturbed him last night.

“The weather—” Yennefer’s eyebrows flick up, and then she laughs. “Do you know where we are, Geralt?”

“That’s what Jaskier and I were trying to find out.”

“This is Castle Baehrendt.” Yennefer runs her hand along the surface of the desk by which they stand. “It only appears on occasion. I’ve never managed to be in the right place at the right time before. I felt something during the storm last night, and I was so surprised when I found…” Yennefer pauses, her expression lapsing into one of deep thought, and Geralt does not interrupt her. Quiet has always come easily to the two of them. Eventually she says, “Your bard.”

Geralt’s breath catches a little. His bard. Yes, that’s right. “What of him?”

“Stars,” she says, and that doesn’t explain anything more than his lover’s name on its own. “Has he changed at all?”

“No,” Geralt says, but even as the word leaves his mouth, he doubts—not the truth of it, but the rightness. Jaskier hasn’t changed; he’s the same man who approached Geralt in a tavern, if a little braver, if a little less (a very little less) foolhardy, every inch as stubborn-coated smiles, and he is more than that, too. When Geralt breathes him in every evening, there is something he cannot place. It brings to mind magic, but it isn’t like chaos, isn’t like anything he’s encountered in all his years since Kaer Morhen.

Yennefer is looking at him with idle, almost dispassionate consideration when he comes out of this line of thought; the amusement is betrayed at one corner of her mouth. “He has, then.”

“I don’t know,” Geralt says, as frankly as he can, and Yennefer laughs, a sound that seems to physically break into the stillness of the castle. “What do you think I did to him when I made that wish?”

“I can honestly say I have no idea,” Yennefer says, evidently fascinated and bored at once; it’s a combination few can pull off, but Yennefer has always been a master of the thing. “The djinn may have done nothing, or it may have done quite a lot, they’re tricky creatures, you know that as well as I.” She pauses. “Possibly better than.” Her head tips to one side. “I do wonder if the djinn knew what it was doing.”

And all he’d wanted was a nap. A good night’s sleep. Not to unthinkingly change—whatever it is he might have changed.

“I couldn’t have—” Geralt stops, unable to voice a thought he’s had more than enough times to be sick of the thing.

“You couldn’t have what?” Yennefer prompts, and Geralt closes his eyes. He hears Jaskier’s _I love you_ , exasperated and fond and crying and panted into his skin and like a flitting thought and all the different notes Jaskier has ever used to tell him so; he hadn’t known a person could say three words in such a wide-ranging variety of ways, and Jaskier is always surprising him with another. He doesn’t say it enough, himself, but Jaskier knows.

“I couldn’t have made him love me,” Geralt says, and Yennefer’s laughter this time is as sharp as the crack of a whip.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Geralt,” she says, taking him by the wrist.

“I didn’t think I was.” The words are flat, because he can’t let them be anything else.

“You are.” Her voice is firm as her grip, each trying to outdo the other. She takes him toward the doors. “You didn’t wish for him to love, you wished for something absurd, and you might have got it. And you don’t think you did, or you wouldn’t have let yourself touch him, I _know_ you and your impossible sense of honor, Geralt, you’re one of the few men who has any. You and the bard are…” She exhales hard through her nose, irritation passing over her face. “You’re _here_ and I wasn’t expecting you. I am here for my own reasons, not to provide counsel. But you know I’m right.”

The abrupt change of subject isn’t a surprise. Leastwise when he spots Jaskier some feet down the hallway, examining the thready remains of a tapestry, his shoulders still tense, though he’s clearly trying to feign indifference. Geralt doesn’t excuse himself from Yennefer, just makes his way to Jaskier, sets a hand on his arm, and when he turns to look back, she’s gone.

“So,” Jaskier says brightly, “the witch is here.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, pulling Jaskier closer to his side, his arm going around the bard’s shoulder to prevent him squirming away; not that Jaskier tries anything of the sort, his head coming to rest on Geralt’s shoulder. She _is_ right. He’d be a fool not to know, and of course he is a fool, but of a different sort; the world is rife with fools, and if he said so to Jaskier it’d be a song within the day.

But he had to ask, to put to rest the niggling worry that sometimes whispered to him when he could not sleep.

“We were going to see her eventually, I know,” Jaskier goes on in a tone purely conversational, one hand lifted so that he can examine his fingernails, a telltale sign of false ease, if Geralt needed another. He knows Jaskier down under his skin, never mind that there is _something_ new to him. “It’s fine, truly, only I’d hoped we would see her when I was bringing a crowd to tears with my lovely voice, not standing in a moldy, abandoned castle that near as I can tell, shouldn’t actually _be_ here.”

“What do you mean, shouldn’t be here?” Geralt says, because Yennefer had said similar, and because it’s easier to think about the castle than it is Jaskier and Yennefer, both of whom he’s loved, in different ways. His love for Jaskier is—bah, he’s not the poet in this relationship, he’s best for driving swords through the bellies of beasts. His love for Jaskier _is_. That’s what matters. It so thoroughly _is_ all through his veins he’d thought he might lose his mind all those years, watching Jaskier entreat others into his bed and doing so himself to get Jaskier out of his own head, for all the damned good it ever did him. It was easier with some partners, where he could focus on the curves of breasts and wide hips, but even then he so often caught his thoughts wandering to Jaskier, to the softness he knew of that skin and the laughter in his voice and how he might sound with Geralt’s mouth on his chest, how those hands would feel between his legs, and how it would be to have Jaskier looking at him like he was a beautiful song in need of writing down. It had been a sort of hell, traveling with Jaskier, and one he wouldn’t have given up for anything, and _content_ may have been something of a strong word.

But Geralt hadn’t realized he was fully starving for want of Jaskier until he’d gotten his first real taste; he’s starving, still, because there won’t ever be enough to sate him. Witchers, beasts indeed.

“I mean,” Jaskier says, frowning at his fingernails and rubbing them on his shirt before gesturing around them, “I mean _look_ at the place. Somebody would have noticed, there aren’t just castles left lying about unoccupied. There ought to at least be brigands or alps or something, don’t you think?”

Geralt laughs, and touches a kiss to Jaskier’s hairline, and says, “Should I go find you an alp?” and Jaskier makes a little _hmph_ of a sound, almost sullen; it makes Geralt want to take him apart, see what other sounds he can wring from him, but it’s not the time.

“There aren’t any brigands or alps,” Jaskier says a moment later, a little catch in his voice that snags Geralt’s attention very well, “but there are plenty of toys, and clothes, and—”

He stops.

“And?” Geralt prods.

“And it’s _cold_.” Jaskier looks up at him, an unhappy set to his mouth. “It’s too cold, now the storm’s over. Don’t you feel it?”

Geralt looks at Jaskier’s eyes, intent on him. Jaskier hasn’t changed; Jaskier is changing, and more and more, it seems, since the two of them have become what they are now. Geralt touches his thumb to Jaskier’s lip, an unconscious movement, and Jaskier’s breath is warm, perfectly at ease like Geralt’s not a wild animal, and then Geralt thinks there’s nothing for him to do but lean in, his hand dropping when he’s close enough. He remembers, as that arm goes instead around Jaskier’s waist, Jaskier with an extinct flower behind his ear, talking to a flower queen as though it were the easiest thing in the world, the sort of thing he did every day, and he wonders what that might mean.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Jaskier murmurs when they pull apart—but not so far apart that Geralt can’t feel Jaskier’s breathing, still, on his lips—one hand resting on Geralt’s chest, fingertips on the medallion, his other hand at Geralt’s hair, “but what brought that on?”

“I wanted to do it,” Geralt says, and Jaskier looks startled for a moment before the expression is smoothed away with a smile, and his bard says, “In that case,” and kisses Geralt himself. It’s a longer kiss this time, an exploratory, meandering sort of thing; it’s only the sudden spate of giggles that breaks them apart, Jaskier startling worse than the horses sometimes do, so his teeth break hard into Geralt’s lip, and Geralt tastes the metallic tang of blood.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier says, his eyes wide and bewildered, a spot of red on his own lip.

Geralt wipes that away with the back of his thumb. “Hardly felt it.”

“You did hear that, didn’t you?” Jaskier’s eyes are roving the hallway now, even as he’s pressing his back to Geralt’s chest. “I wasn’t imagining the spooky laughter?”

“You weren’t,” Geralt assures him, and Jaskier looks almost disappointed, like he’d hoped it was some trick of the mind instead of a proper haunting. “Cheer up.” Geralt nudges him beneath the chin. “You’ll have a new song about it. We should find Yen. She probably knows something about this.”

“She probably _did_ it. Just a fun game of let’s frighten the bard.”

“Are you frightened?”

“Of course I’m not, you’re here.” There’s a sour, sulky note in Jaskier’s voice, but he doesn’t complain when Geralt takes a firm hold of his hand. “I just thought we were joking about the ghosts.”

The scent of Yennefer, the very same since the first day they crossed ways, when she saved Jaskier’s life no matter how self-serving her motivations, is an easy one to pick up and follow, all the way to a tower in the castle’s third floor. They come upon her in a room as disheveled as the others, her hand resting on the edge of a long-forgotten cradle. The expression on her face is part pensive and part sorrow, and Geralt is loathe to interrupt, wherever her thoughts have taken her; he opens his mouth to do so anyway.

Yennefer beats him to it. “This was an orphanage,” she says, as though very far away, “of a sort.”

“Of a sort?” Jaskier says, in that mild, impossibly sarcastic way he has.

Yennefer throws him a hard look, her eyes cold and nearly glassy, and Geralt knows that look.

He says, “Jaskier,” and Jaskier makes a face, but waves a hand for Yennefer to go on.

“Children were raised here who had nowhere else to go,” Yennefer says.

“So it was exactly an orphanage,” Jaskier offers.

“It was run by a sorceress.” Yennefer doesn’t bother to look at him, for all intents and purposes acts as though she hasn’t heard him interrupt. “We weren’t acquainted, but we shared mutual—friends.”

“Oh, that’s good then.”

Yennefer leans more of her weight on the cradle, and Geralt cannot help a sliver of surprise, that it doesn’t collapse beneath her; the thing looks ready to split in two under a good, hard breath.

“What happened here, Yen?” Geralt asks, and now her shoulders tense, and so do Jaskier’s.

“The sorceress went away,” Yennefer says. “It was only supposed to be for a little while. It wasn’t…” There’s a longing, near pleading expression on her face, one of the most honest expressions Geralt has ever seen on those perfectly-sculpted features. He’s never judged Yennefer for the choices she’s made. They have been _her_ choices; she would not be Yennefer, had she made different ones. Her fingers curl in the bed of the cradle. “She was killed before she made it back. The children never learned what happened to her.”

“Did they die on their own?” Blunt questions need asking all the same as the tactful sort.

Yennefer’s expression turns almost amused, but it’s a sad sort of amusement. “No, Geralt. They stayed, and they lived, the older ones nearly grown and knowing well enough what they were doing, and the sorceress had left enchantments in place that helped them along. Eventually though, there was nobody left.” She wipes nonexistent lint from her sleeve.

Geralt says, for the benefit of nobody, “But this castle is haunted.”

“By children, yes,” Yennefer says. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? They didn’t die as children, but they linger the way they were when she left them.” She purses her lips. “Interesting and sad.”

“You came to help them move on,” Geralt says, not asking, because there’s nothing to ask.

Yennefer makes a sound of acknowledgment. “I haven’t found them yet. I’ve heard them about, but that’s not the same thing.”

“Jaskier is good at finding things, recently.”

“Is he?” The doubt in her voice is clear as Jaskier’s singing voice.

Geralt looks to Jaskier, who’s turned uncharacteristically silent throughout this exchange, and finds him chewing at his lower lip with a determination that suggests he’s somewhere else, not listening to this at all. He exchanges a glance with Yennefer, who gives him a meaningful look he translates as _he_ _’s yours to deal with_ , and Geralt knows the truth in that.

He touches Jaskier’s wrist and says, “Dandelion,” and Jaskier’s attention shoots to him, his eyes gone startled-wide, and he sucks in a gasping, grasping sort of breath.

His eyes flick between Geralt and Yennefer, and when he says, “Oh, you’re still here,” in a tone that conveys he dearly wishes otherwise, it doesn’t sound convincing.

“Come on,” Geralt says, and takes him from the room. He doesn’t know where they’re going. Lets Jaskier lead the way, though Jaskier still seems—far away. He’s somewhere else, and Geralt isn’t sure it’s a place he can follow; he’s damned well going to try.

Jaskier brings them to a wide space that must have been some sort of play room, not the kind of thing they had in Kaer Morhen, and toes at a long-abandoned doll. There’s a single shelf of ragged books and a rocking chair with a worn blanket hung over the back. “If you want me to get along with her,” Jaskier says without looking at him, “I’ve unfortunate news for you.”

“No.” Geralt examines the doll. He wonders if the young princess of Cintra would like such a thing. How old must she be now? He’s thought, on occasion, of going to see her, of claiming his due, but it leaves a poor taste in his mouth. Best to leave her to her family. Now he takes Jaskier’s hand in his own, rubs his thumb in circles on Jaskier’s soft palm. “Did you ever want children?”

It isn’t what he meant to say, and it results in astonished, raised eyebrows. “Come again?”

Geralt meets his eyes steadily. “Children.”

“What would I do with a child?” Jaskier sounds strangled.

“Raise it, I assume.”

“Raise it!” Now he’s utterly appalled, the look on his face like nothing Geralt has ever seen before. “ _Geralt_. When have I ever given the impression—and if this is just you starting on another angle for all of your—” He wrinkles his nose, evidently unable to find the words, for once, then blusters on. “I don’t want children. I’d be an awful parent, and it would hardly be fit for a child, the life we lead.” He pauses, giving Geralt a thoughtful look, then hooking two fingers into his collar. “Do _you_ want children?”

“I can’t have them,” Geralt reminds them. “Witchers are sterile.”

“Not what I asked.”

Geralt thinks, again, of the princess. Thinks of Yennefer’s desperation. Thinks of the dryads and their grumbling about his uselessness. Thinks of Jaskier, laughing at something he’s said that he hadn’t meant to be funny.

“No,” he says. “I have what I want.”

Jaskier’s expression, then—the only word Geralt can think to describe it is _soppy_. He tangles their fingers together fully, turns so he can rest his cheek on Geralt’s chest. “Do you want to tell me what’s happening here? I confess I wasn’t listening when your former lover was talking.” The lilt of his voice changes on _former lover_ , his smile loose, a little pained. “I assume she’s not just playing tricks.”

Geralt shares the story, all of it, because it’s difficult to know where Jaskier might have stopped listening; the look on his face lingers in the back of Geralt’s mind. At the end, there’s that laughter, ebullient and breathless and disbelieving, “ _Me_? You think _I_ know where to find ghost children?”

“You found the queen of the wilds,” Geralt says.

“I’d no choice,” Jaskier says, fingers still hooked at Geralt’s collar and face still against Geralt’s chest, “she stole my peach, and anyway, I was only following what she left for me.” He quiets, then says, more thoughtfully, “What do ghosts leave?”

“I imagine it depends on the ghost,” Yennefer says, and Jaskier curses under his breath, in what Geralt recognizes as several different languages, at least one of them dead; the benefits of a classical education, he supposes.

Jaskier makes no move to leave Geralt’s arms, only says a bland, “I don’t remember inviting you to this conversation.”

Yennefer’s smile nearly meets her eyes. “I’m invited to every conversation.”

Jaskier barks this laugh. “Yes, I’m sure you are. Are you going to be helpful, as long as you’re here?”

Yennefer waves an elegant hand. “Geralt spoke so highly, I felt sure you could do this on your own. Do you need me to hold your hand?”

“I’d rather cut it off,” Jaskier says, through a smile and his teeth. He does step away from Geralt then, huffing out through his nose. He turns a meditative circle, then ambles across the room to settle in the rocking chair. He leans forward, elbows set upon his knees, chin rested on folded-together hands.

“What are you doing?” Yennefer says, pleasant and clipped.

“Not talking to witches. Quiet.”

Geralt expects a retort, but Yennefer only chooses a wall to lean against. The sweet smell around Jaskier is stronger now.

When Jaskier speaks, it might almost be to himself; Geralt has known him to do the same at a campfire. “I don’t know much about children, I’m afraid. Were you listening, hm, when this witcher asked if I wanted to have any? He’s a soft man, my witcher, you wouldn’t know it to look at him, but there it is. Now, children…I suppose it’s stories you like? Long overdue for bedtime, I imagine, but there’s nothing I can do about _that_ , I’m not the one haunting a castle.” He grimaces, and sighs. “I prefer lullabies to stories, no reason we can’t have some of each. My lute is downstairs, we’ll have to make due, hate to keep an audience waiting.”

Then Jaskier closes his eyes, and Geralt hears the breath he draws, and some might imagine, that after so many years spent in the bard’s company, his voice might be less affecting; but Jaskier could still bring Geralt to his knees with words alone. The lullaby he sings is story indeed, about stormy nights and safety and sorceresses, too, and there is no other sound in the room, full as it is now, with silvery figures. Children, every one of their number, and it is difficult to tell with spirits, but Geralt would mark the largest among them at no older than thirteen.

Geralt looks to Yennefer, and of course she sees them too; her lips are parted in surprise, her eyes wet, and he returns his attention to Jaskier.

Jaskier’s eyes open again on his last word, and he looks nonplussed at the sight of his audience, as though he hadn’t expected them to still be there. The moment he rebalances himself is visible in his smile.

“There you are,” he says amiably. “I should think you want to go now, don’t you? Go on and have your rest.”

And then the memories of children are gone like so much smoke.

The moment they’ve gone, Jaskier leans back, stretching his arms first up and then behind his head to cross them there. “So, do either of you want to tell me what it is I’ve just done?”

_If I had any idea._

“You sang a lullaby,” Yennefer says, and her eyes are dry again, so like they were never anything else Geralt might think he imagined it, if he didn’t know better, and Jaskier is opening his mouth, Geralt can already hear the _I know that damned much, thank you, is age finally taking your mind_ , but Yennefer beats him to speech with a, “Thank you,” and Jaskier looks like he’s choking.

“What do you mean by that?” he says, his voice doing the squinting.

“I mean _thank you_ , you insufferable little—” Yennefer cuts herself off, giving Jaskier an assaying look. “I’m not sure what to call you. I do wonder what you’ve done, Geralt.”

With that, she walks out of the room, and Geralt has had enough farewells with Yennefer to recognize them. Irritation flickers across Jaskier’s face, but he doesn’t call after her, only swings his gaze to Geralt and says, “She didn’t mean that as an insult, did she?”

“Only the insufferable part,” Geralt says, already closing the distance between himself and the rocking chair. He does go to his knees, his hands on Jaskier’s thighs.

Jaskier looks unsure what he’s supposed to do with Yennefer _not_ insulting him; he settles on scowling, then drumming his fingers on the arms of the rocking chair, his eyes down, like he’s studying Geralt’s hand. “That sorceress—not the one that’s just gone, the _other_ one, the dead one—used to sing them lullabies from this chair. I can feel it, somehow. Couldn’t say if she ever sang the one I’ve just done, but…suppose I’m glad to have done whatever that was. And what about you? Any thoughts on all this?”

“Does it scare you?”

“Not as such. Does it scare _you_?”

_Everything about you scares me._

“I love you,” Geralt says, his voice low and rough, and tips Jaskier’s face up with his knuckle to kiss him.

“I’m not sure that’s relevant to the discussion,” Jaskier says after, apparently unconcerned, “but if you’d like to tell me again?”

His eyes are star-bright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was asked if I ever planned to write anything from Geralt's POV, and the gut answer was "not for this fic" and I think it took about 5 minutes for me to go "welllllllllll" and here we are!
> 
> Yen here probably feels more like book!Yen than Netflix!Yen, because I know her better in the books :')
> 
> Comments fuel the author's heart 💖


	7. magic, of course

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie: this chapter is pretty much just smut. I wanted to play with a trope.

Jaskier’s mind wanders, while Geralt is having a discussion with a barmaid, to just how frequent abnormal huts and cottages and shacks are. It’s always one of the three, isn’t it? And always off somewhere in the woods.

That or it’s drowners. Rampant little bastards.

It isn’t drowners today, so it’s a—shack, maybe, or nearer a hut, to hear the townspeople talk of it. The alderman told them about the problem to begin with, his expression wrinkled with distaste, before suggesting they have a word with the other residents, as it was apparently impacting a not-insignificant percentage of the populace.

Jaskier strums idly at his lute without playing much of anything. The barmaid is the sixth or seventh person they’ve come to. She’s a cute thing, her hair a vibrant red, her nose pointed and her skin golden, and her face is remarkably close to the color of her hair just now; she’s also much too young for his tastes, even if he were interested in straying from Geralt. She’s been to this shack or hut or whatever it might be, with a lady friend who works as an assistant to the town’s healer, and seems exactly as interested in providing details as everyone else they’ve met.

Cagey, that’s what these people are. How they expect Geralt to solve their problems when they won’t even tell him what the problem _is_ , only that it’s something magic—

There are _lots_ of magic things. It might be any of them. Though given everyone here is alive it’s probably nothing especially horrible.

“Is it dangerous?” Geralt asks each of them.

“Of a sort,” according to a twitchy farmhand.

“I don’t think it is,” from a seamstress, who’d gotten this faraway, dreamy look as she said it.

“ _Obviously_ it’s dangerous,” courtesy of a sputtering, red-faced blacksmith’s apprentice.

“It depends on how much you like the person you go with,” the barmaid says now, twisting a lock of hair around her finger, letting it spring free and then doing it again.

Jaskier mulls the words over, turning them about for all the possible meanings; he finds he likes most of them. Geralt thanks the barmaid for her time, complete with passing her a coin, and then they exit the tavern. It’s a beautiful day out, the sun high and beating down so that Jaskier has to blink against it until his eyes have adjusted.

“Are we going for a look today,” he asks, “or saving it for tomorrow?”

“I’ve heard enough. I’m going today.”

Jaskier gives him a long, unimpressed look. “It’s adorable the way you still say _I_ sometimes, like I’m going to let you go without me. This isn’t anything deadly, we’ve gathered that much. Sounds much more interesting. And you and I like each other very much, by my recollection.”

Geralt’s look is just as long and just as unimpressed, and then it’s only a matter of who’s going to break first; it isn’t Jaskier, who cheats some by taking Geralt’s hand and bringing it to his mouth, kissing the back of it. “Shall we go and get the horses?”

They do go and get the horses, and they make for this hut. It isn’t terribly far from the town, an hour’s ride at Roach’s impatient trot, tucked away into the trees. Jaskier decides, some distance away, that it’s really more of a cabin than anything else. It’s not wobbly enough for hutdom or shackhood. It doesn’t _look_ like anything to worry over. There’s a paddock attached, complete with a little shelter in case of rain. They dismount just outside the gate.

Smoke drifts from the chimney. Jaskier says, “Do you think somebody’s home?”

“Could be.” Geralt sniffs the air, then indicates a nearby post. “I’m tying the horses. Don’t go inside without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Jaskier nods, and he does mean to keep his word.

At first he only studies the cabin, doing a full circle around it like _he_ _’s_ going to be the one to notice something. But maybe he could be, after the situation at Wyrasta and in that castle with Yennefer looking down her nose at him, until she wasn’t. It’s a strange thought. One that occupies his mind a great deal of late. There’s never been anything special about him, not like _that_ , and if it’s down to Geralt’s wish (and it has to be down to Geralt’s wish, hasn’t it?), well, that was years ago, so why’s it only now that he’s showing any signs of—whatever it is he’s showing signs of. Some kind of magic.

_Him._ Julian Alfred Pankratz. Jaskier. The Bard Dandelion.

And yet, some kind of magic or no, there’s nothing strange about this place from the outside. Straining his ears gets him nowhere. He even raps his knuckles against the wood in a few places, imagining there might be something to notice by touch. There’s no reaction to any of that, so probably nobody’s inside.

“That’s a fire hazard,” he says to himself, of the puffing chimney.

When he’s circled the place twice and come back around to the front, Geralt still hasn’t joined him, so he gives the front door a critical look—and steps inside, announcing himself with a, “Knock, knock,” as he does.

It’s nicer than he expected. _Much_ nicer. Like somebody of means might live here, rather than it being an unoccupied cabin in the middle of a forest. There’s only the one room, but that room is well-furnished: there’s a plush, jewel green rug spread on the floor; and a chair with a quilt laid over top; a gleaming-polished wardrobe with several drawers stands beside a wine rack, beside which is a cupboard he takes for the larder, and a smaller chest; there is an oven, the obvious source of the chimney smoke; and the bed, made up with plenty of pillows and soft blankets, is of a size for three, possibly four. (Five, if they were very small, or very creative.)

The wine, on closer inspection, is impossibly cool, given its circumstances. He uncorks one bottle and sniffs it, but doesn’t drink. Contrary to the beliefs of some witches, he’s not a complete idiot. The wine smells…like wine. He replaces it on the rack, notes that there is plenty of fresh water to hand as well, and moves on to check the larder. It’s well-stocked, primarily with meats and fruits and cheeses, though there’s also an assortment of sweet breads. He considers, for a short while, the bowls of thick cream and melted chocolate and what appears to be a variety of syrups, the implications thereof and all that.

Jaskier turns, meaning to rifle next through the wardrobe, and stops to stare at the bed. It’s gotten smaller while his back was turned. Now it’s of a good size to hold himself and Geralt.

“Is that meant to be an invitation?” His tone is light and conversational, though it unnerves him. “I’m sure I’ve heard stories about sleeping in strange beds.”

The implications thereof _indeed_.

Now he does give his attention to the wardrobe and its drawers; his eyebrows lift with each new discovery. The abundance of oil is, truth told, the least interesting part of the lot: there’s a whip, for one thing, and a paddle, and cuffs, and—“oh my, what have we here,” he says over one drawer—an impressive array of dildos. He lingers over these, a bit stunned and a bit excited, and he chides his cock for the latter. It all looks very clean. Well-maintained by _somebody_ , or perhaps by magic, not that he’s ever heard of such a thing.

What is taking Geralt so long? The man can tether the horses in his sleep. Jaskier slides the drawer shut and moves along to the little chest, the only thing left to go through, sat back on his haunches.

“I’m not sure what I expected to find,” he says, considering the number of aphrodisiacal substances and their neat little labels, “but it should have been you.”

There are strawberries, of course, and chocolates, and both of those things infused with more interesting agents. There are also rarer things, some of them things Jaskier hasn’t had the opportunity to try before.

“And you won’t be trying now,” he tells himself.

(He hasn’t used any aphrodisiacs at all with Geralt, not yet. There’s not exactly been a need, though there’s _need_ and there’s _fun_ , and a few of the options here ought to match his stamina better to Geralt’s, and that would be very fun indeed.)

Jaskier closes the chest without picking anything. This time when he turns away, there’s a small table beside the bed that wasn’t there before.

“Hello, hello,” he says, more curious (and somewhat exasperated) than concerned, and maybe more amused than he should be. “Where’d you come from?”

The table, blessedly, doesn’t answer. Jaskier takes the few steps to examine its contents. Two glasses of wine that may or may not have been poured from the rack and a note that says only “Enjoy your stay” in an elegant hand that feels like sex in a way Jaskier wasn’t aware handwriting could. He snorts.

Footsteps sound behind him, Geralt apparently not troubling to be quiet just now, and Jaskier looks to the door with a somewhat wry smile, which is met, predictably enough, by a deep frown. “I thought I told you to stay outside.”

Jaskier flaps a hand, waving the words away like a song at night’s end. “And when have I ever listened to a thing like that?”

Geralt makes a sound between a grunt and a sigh in resigned acknowledgment of the statement-by-way-of-question’s truth. The medallion is pulsing against his chest in a way Jaskier would almost describe as emphatic. Geralt’s taking in the room around them, taking slow steps forward after closing the door behind him. Jaskier doesn’t ask if he meant to do that. Geralt knows what he’s doing.

And then Geralt is in front of him, at the bed. Jaskier’s hand comes up to dance across the medallion’s surface, practically fondling it. “Feels awfully strongly about something, doesn’t it?”

“This place reeks.” Geralt’s nostrils flare some to punctuate the point.

“Smells perfectly all right to me,” Jaskier says, because the cottage smells of fresh rain and jasmine, though he knows that’s not what Geralt means. “Do you want to tell me what it reeks of to that nose of yours?”

Geralt doesn’t answer, one of his hands cupping Jaskier’s cheek, his eyes focused intently on Jaskier’s mouth. His thumb draws a line along Jaskier’s parted lips, and Jaskier makes a soft sound that’s mostly approval, with just a hint of inquiry, because he didn’t think this was what they were doing at the moment, but he’s hardly (ha!) going to complain if Geralt wants to kiss him like they’ve never touched before now, like he’s absolutely starved for it, a drowning man coming up for breath, and that is how Geralt is kissing him, so Jaskier gets one hand to Geralt’s hip and kisses him back with an equally hungry desperation, and whatever is wrong with this lovely little cabin will just have to wait.

Jaskier’s other hand is still at the medallion. It’s nothing for him to push, though he doesn’t expect Geralt to budge, and it’s a delightful little surprise when he does, dropping onto the bed that takes his weight without so much as a creak of protest.

“Sturdy thing, isn’t it,” Jaskier says appreciatively. He does like a well-made bed.

Geralt yanks at his wrist and he goes, nearly losing his balance along the way. They get settled nicely with Jaskier’s knees to either side of Geralt’s hips, and Jaskier has some indistinct inkling that Geralt doesn’t usually put aside work for the sake of tumbling Jaskier into bed, but the thought wafts away again before he’s really grasped it. He laughs when Geralt’s teeth nip at his lip, wraps his arms around his witcher’s neck and matches him every step of the way.

They’re pressed deliciously close together, and Jaskier’s trousers are growing tight. Geralt somehow worms a hand between them, presses his palm to the growing bulge, and the sound Jaskier makes is almost embarrassing. He thinks he might come terribly quickly; they haven’t even _done_ anything yet.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says against his mouth, and he makes an ‘I’m listening’ sound, his hips rolling, and if he finds himself full-on humping Geralt’s hand, well, he’ll just have to live with himself, won’t he? There are worse fates in the world.

Geralt doesn’t follow his name with anything except for the unlacing of his trousers, shoving them down over Jaskier’s hips with such force Jaskier expects to hear a seam yield under the pressure, and then Geralt’s hand is around his cock, thumb gathering up the wetness beaded at the tip and smoothing the way, and _fuck_ , Jaskier has to thrust into his perfect, absolutely perfect grip. Geralt has become something of an expert in the ways he likes to be touched, knows how much pressure Jaskier likes, just the way to twist his wrist to make Jaskier’s breath stutter. It’s Geralt who breaks the kiss, and though Jaskier tries to follow his mouth, wanting to feel his tongue again, Geralt leans back, and his other hand goes to Jaskier’s hip, forces him to be still, and the sound Jaskier makes is all protest.

“Here,” Geralt says, and before Jaskier can point out that he _is_ here, what more proximity can Geralt possibly want from him, he leans himself backwards until he’s fully lying down, bringing Jaskier along with him. Jaskier nearly lands with an elbow to Geralt’s nose, which would be decidedly _un_ sexy, but he brings it down beside Geralt’s head instead, and kisses him in a triumphant sort of way. Geralt releases his cock, draws his hand along Jaskier’s thigh and from there the curve of his hip, and Jaskier whines, rather, nothing else to call it.

He lifts his head and Geralt meets his eyes, his mouth kissed red and inviting, and Jaskier breathes, “Would you suck my cock, Geralt,” and Geralt fully growls, like the White Wolf of Rivia he is.

There is some clambering involved, as Jaskier’s boots are still on and he really can’t be troubled to pause and remove them just now, not with more pressing matters to be getting on with, and his trousers aren’t even past his knees, which he does see to, wrestling them further out of the way before he kneels over Geralt’s waiting mouth.

He doesn’t get as far as lowering himself—Geralt’s hands come to either side of his hips, and Geralt lifts his head, and Jaskier feels positively dizzied with lust, by the sight of Geralt so hungry for a taste of him.

“That’s right,” he says, or moans, doesn’t care to think on words just now, “that’s right, take it, anything you want,” and there’s that growl again, the vibrations on his cock, and he has to grab for the headboard lest he lose his balance and tip unfortunately forward. Geralt’s mouth around him is a marvel, always is, because the thing about the way Geralt sucks a cock is—he does want it, swallows Jaskier like this is going to be his last meal, is nearly goddamned reverent, worshipful, and Jaskier can’t look away from where Geralt’s lips stretch around him. He’s never going to grow used to this, to having Geralt’s mouth all over him, that Geralt, grumpy and irritable and unpleasant as he always is, not only wants him, but revels in him.

Jaskier takes one hand from the headboard and runs his fingers through Geralt’s hair, does that several times before tracing one fingertip down Geralt’s face. He comes to Geralt’s mouth, and Geralt moans around him, and Jaskier feels ruined by it.

“Darling wolf,” he says, because he wants to say it, and also because he wants to hear Geralt moan with a mouthful of _him_ again. Geralt rewards him beautifully. His tongue is at the head of Jaskier’s cock, curled around him, and Jaskier’s breath stutters when Geralt leans up on his elbows to take him deeper, till his lips are at the root of him. Everything is slick. Hot. Geralt is pulling back and then taking him deep again, and Jaskier hears the sounds falling from his own lips like they’re coming from somebody else, needy little whimpers. Geralt’s hands are probably leaving marks on the insides of his thighs, finger-shaped bruises that’ll make sitting on Roach later unpleasant, but he’s gotten plenty used to sitting on horseback when he’s sore for all sorts of reasons.

That is to say: he’ll make do.

When he feels his orgasm building, Jaskier pulls himself away from Geralt’s hungry mouth ( _hungry wolves,_ he thinks, somewhere far away) and then Geralt’s hand is there instead, without him saying a word, and then he’s coming in strips all over Geralt’s face and covered chest. He stays where he is, panting his way through it, until Geralt hauls him down, and it’s possibly even less coordinated than before, but Jaskier hasn’t got any complaints about the kiss that follows.

They kiss for what feels like an eternity and no time at all, Jaskier’s fingers combing through Geralt’s hair again and again, and he thinks he _could_ do this forever, thinks that Geralt would let him. They could meet their ends together by way of ignoring food and drink in favor of each other.

“I love you,” he breathes when they do part, his eyes locking with Geralt’s yellow, yellow like a sunset, almost amber in the lighting here; Jaskier has written poems for those eyes. Jaskier has written odes to every inch of Geralt, whispered them silent into his skin, not for sharing with the wider world. He loves the joints of Geralt’s callused fingers and the ticklish spot at the back of Geralt’s left thigh (which Geralt denies exists). He loves the relaxation in Geralt’s shoulders when they’re together this way and the place on his hip that makes Geralt push toward him, asking without asking, to be touched.

There is nothing of Geralt of Rivia that Jaskier does not love, so many years of it built up inside without his notice, he cannot help the way it overflows from him now, and he sees no reason he should _try_. This brings him back to Geralt’s eyes, to the awe he sees there every time, like it _still_ comes as a shock that Jaskier can (and does, how he does) love him.

Jaskier wonders sometimes if Geralt will look that way when he says it ten years from now, or twenty, however many he has left to him.

_Probably,_ he thinks, somewhat soppily, because that’s the way Geralt is, and Jaskier loves that about him, too.

So he says it again, now—

“I love you,” while his lips trail sweet kisses from Geralt’s mouth to his neck. Geralt’s shirt has yet to come off, which is tedious, and Jaskier realizes with some consternation that _he_ is still shirt-clad as well. For the moment, he settles for seeing to Geralt’s.

“My Geralt,” as he gathers his own seed onto his fingers and teases them down Geralt’s front.

“A wolf with your teeth in my heart,” with his own teeth scraping over Geralt’s nipple, and Geralt shudders beneath him. His other hand takes care of pushing Geralt’s trousers out of the way.

“Come to steal me away,” when he eases Geralt’s legs as apart as he can in Geralt’s current state of dress, fingers slippery on hard thighs. His lips slide from one nipple to the other and back again. He’s leisurely about it, no need to hurry when they’ve a perfect bed beneath them, and just for a moment he wonders about that perfect bed. Geralt’s medallion is still pulsing.

But then Geralt’s breath shakes, and Jaskier smiles, perhaps more like a fox than a wolf. More like a star? He hasn’t the faintest idea how a star smiles, all sweet faraway stuff probably.

But Geralt, Geralt is not far away, he’s just here, and Jaskier pushes a finger into him with a little more resistance than usual, probably because Geralt’s legs aren’t able to spread much, and he whispers, “Consider me successfully stolen.” His eyes flick up to watch Geralt’s face, the way his lips part. Jaskier has to kiss him, then, has to lean up and catch Geralt’s mouth with his own, is still kissing him when he adds a second finger, a third, and Geralt’s breathing is like a song, strung out and staccato.

Jaskier breaks the kiss in favor of watching Geralt’s face, adores the look of pleasure on him. When Geralt is close—Jaskier has learned all the ways to tell, not the least of which is Geralt’s leaking cock, the darkening of yellow eyes—he swallows him to the root, so Geralt spills down his throat, and he feels greedy for it, swipes his tongue out to catch the excess that runs over his lips, aware of Geralt watching him.

There are still two full wineglasses on the bedside table (as well as the bottle, which Jaskier thinks was not there before, but cannot bring himself to worry overmuch about) and Jaskier tosses himself down beside Geralt before ignoring the glasses in favor of the bottle and taking a swig. He thrusts the bottle toward Geralt, who accepts it and has several tugs of his own, the muscles of his throat a source of some distraction. Their clothes haven’t made it what you’d call _off_ , only pulled askew and disheveled in ways that look somewhat more salacious than if they _were_ removed and strewn about the floor.

“How did either of us think this comfortable?” he wonders, and sits himself up to wrestle out of his boots. While he’s upright, movement from the window catches his eye.

“Geralt,” he says, wriggling across the bed and pressing a palm against the glass. “Weren’t you going to just tie the horses to a post or something?”

“That was my plan,” Geralt agrees, biting into a cube of cheese, which makes Jaskier blink, because he’s _certain_ that plate of cold meats and cheese and grapes was not there. Almost certain. He might be misremembering. In any case, he’s jealous of the cheese.

“You’ve turned them out.” Jaskier indicates the window so Geralt can look for himself, to where Compass and Roach are rolling about in the grass and looking on, unimpressed, respectively. No wonder Geralt took so long to join him in here, if he was removing tack and setting them loose instead of tethering and moving along.

Geralt sets the plate aside, comes up fast on his knees even with his awkward state of dress to look through the window from behind Jaskier. One hand covers Jaskier’s, the other finding a place to rest on his bare hip, and Geralt’s front fits quite nicely against Jaskier’s back, particularly the—particulars, Jaskier thinks, his mouth twitching. “I only meant to tie them,” Geralt says, the words rough and low in Jaskier’s ear.

“I know something else you might tie,” Jaskier says, shivering and pushing himself suggestively back against Geralt, his own particulars rallying for a second round much faster than they usually would. That’s never been much of a problem for Geralt, who’s already tugging Jaskier’s head to the side with rough fingers curled in his hair, stubble rasping against Jaskier’s throat before Geralt’s teeth are there, and his tongue, and Jaskier falls fully back against him, his eyes closing. “Supposing we take our clothes off this time, hm?”

There’s a huff of laughter, and then Geralt’s got one hand beneath his shirt, spread over his chest, and the tearing sound comes as little surprise.

“I liked this shirt,” Jaskier says mildly, turning his face to catch Geralt’s mouth in a kiss. Geralt lunges for him, pins him into place, and Jaskier is perfectly happy to be pinned, but he squirms beneath him anyway, all for the fun of it, till Geralt’s freed him of trousers and underclothes. The sensation of Geralt’s clothes against his skin is delicious.

“Is it tying you want?” Geralt asks, his voice raw verging on hoarse. They’ve only done it a handful of times since the spider incident, Geralt taking perfect care with him each time, and Jaskier has resisted the urge to ask him to be rougher; Geralt is a terribly skittish creature in some respects, the chance of hurting Jaskier foremost among them. Nothing they don’t both want.

Now he purrs approval at Geralt’s question, and Geralt reaches over, comes back with a strip of long black fabric that Jaskier is certain doesn’t belong to them. It’s softer than the ones they typically use, like it was made with this sort of thing in mind.

“Where did that come from?”

“It was on the table.”

“Not a few minutes ago, it wasn’t.” Jaskier looks at the fabric with great interest, then gives a little ‘hmm’ that doubles as a shrug, and worms a hand between them to run his thumb along Geralt’s stiffened cock. “Use what you’ve to hand, I suppose.”

There are interesting things to hand in this cabin. He does approve of that. He’ll need to tell Geralt about the contents of the drawers, and also that little chest, but first…

“Let’s get you out of these, yes?” He takes care in properly stripping his witcher down to naught but skin, ghosting breaths over his chest and near enough his cock to tease.

Once Geralt’s clothes have been discarded, he manhandles Jaskier onto his belly, leaning in to ask, “All right?” and Jaskier wriggles some more to let him know how exceedingly _all right_ it is, but says, “No complaints yet,” to fully and vocally assuage any concerns Geralt might be having, and Geralt is just full of concerns, and Jaskier would like to banish them all to the best of his ability, and he’d also like very much to have Geralt’s cock inside him. Speaking of which—

“I do have _one_ complaint, actually.”

“What’s that?” Geralt is seeing to his wrists then, binding each to a bedpost, and then his ankles, and they’ve discussed this before, that Jaskier is to say ‘djinn’ if he’s unhappy with the proceedings, and Geralt is welcome to the word as well, it’s to both their benefit.

“You don’t seem to be fucking me, unless your cock has suddenly gotten too small to—”

Geralt pinches his ass. He yelps, which gives way to laughter. “I will be,” Geralt says, and runs that hand down Jaskier’s flank, and Jaskier can’t get any leverage to push back into his touch.

“I hope so, or this is a waste of a perfectly good spread out minstrel.”

Geralt’s laughter is low, and possibly shouldn’t make Jaskier’s cock twitch the way it does, but most things about Geralt are arousing, and his laugh is quite high on the list, besides that Jaskier just likes to hear it. He likes to know that Geralt is happy, and that he himself has made him so. He settles into place, because there’s little else he can do. Might as well get comfortable here, spread across the bed with Geralt settling between his legs.

The bed shifts beneath Geralt’s weight as he reaches over to the table again, and Jaskier hears the _pop_ of an uncorked bottle, then the drizzling of oil, and he tenses with some anticipation.

“There wasn’t oil there, either,” Geralt says, like this is important.

“This place is very accommodating, isn’t it?” Jaskier agrees. “Seeing as you’ve got me tied to the bed, maybe we leave that matter for later?”

The answer comes as one big hand settling at the small of his back, Geralt’s thumb drawing little circles that make Jaskier purr his contentment. Geralt’s other hand, much more slippery between the two, presses in between, the tip of one finger resting at his rim, not quite pushing in. An arm comes around his hips, and then Geralt is stretched out over him, teeth grazing the tip of Jaskier’s ear. “The way you feel here, Dandelion, you have no idea.”

“Feel better if you were _inside_ ,” Jaskier says, and before he’s finished the last word, that finger’s opening him up, and it dies away with the hitch of his breath, and Geralt laughs again, but it’s heavier this time. It ought to be, the rigid weight of his cock against Jaskier’s skin the way it is. Geralt’s finger pushes deeper, and Jaskier’s toes curl. “ _Geralt_.”

“Something else you want?” If Jaskier hadn’t heard it himself a hundred times over, he wouldn’t believe there could be that much teasing in Geralt’s voice. That finger, all Geralt seems to be giving him, aside from his mouth pressing wet, tongue-heavy kisses to his shoulders, is an absolute torment. It’s not _enough_ , not even with Geralt’s other hand occasionally taking pity on his cock, one or two or three strokes at most before he stops. “I could keep you like this for hours, if I wanted to. Not enough for you to come.”

Jaskier makes a pathetic sound, all whimpering need, at the mere suggestion of it. If that’s what Geralt wants to do to him, he’s not going to complain about it. They’re in a cabin, close enough to the middle of nowhere, not an inn where he’s got to be at least somewhat respectful of other guests and control his volume, not in the middle of the woods where he can be as loud as he likes, so long as he’s willing to contend with stones and all of nature’s other wonders. Here, Geralt could keep him at the edge of climax all night long, if he chose to, and Jaskier could only beg him for release.

The thought is thrilling.

It isn’t all night, but Geralt does see fit to torture him for…oh, who knows, the only sign of time passing is the changing light outside the window, and Jaskier’s not much inclined to focus on the position of the sun when Geralt isn’t getting another finger into him, and Jaskier hasn’t bothered to beg at all, because Geralt might acquiesce, and then it would be closer to ending. He’s all a shivery mess by the time Geralt begins to push with a second finger, and he says, “Just fuck me, Geralt, please.”

“I haven’t finished,” Geralt says, almost mildly, but with that second finger pressing a knuckle deeper as though to make his point for him.

“You can finish with your cock,” Jaskier shoots back, and snorts at his unintentional double-meaning. It gets him what he wants: Geralt gets both palms on his ass to spread him wider and pushes inside, inch by inch, with shallow thrusts that have him gasping like…gasping like something. A fish? No, that’s horrible, he’s not going to be a fish for the purposes of this metaphor.

On Geralt’s next powerful thrust, Jaskier tosses aside his attempt at metaphor altogether and makes a sound that’s mostly babbling and needy, and Geralt, exceptional man that he is, gives him exactly what he asks for.

After, when Geralt’s untied him and rubbed his wrists and ankles, and Jaskier is sex-drunk-and-drowsy (or is it from the wine?), they lay together on the bed. “What,” Jaskier says through a yawn, nuzzling closer to Geralt, whose medallion is still wide awake on his chest, “was all that?”

“That was magic.” Geralt’s running one languid hand up and down his back.

Jaskier makes a sage sound as though to say, _right, magic, of course_ ; and then he is asleep.

* * *

The sky outside the cabin is dark when Jaskier’s eyes open, afternoon given way to night while they slept. _Slept._ In a place where _something_ odd is certainly happening. Both of Geralt’s arms are around him, and his witcher’s breathing and heartbeat are steady, but there is a strung tension in him as well, so Jaskier knows he must be awake. He burrows himself against the heat of Geralt’s body and says, “We weren’t planning to fuck here, were we?”

“No,” Geralt says, dry, but Jaskier hears a touch of humor in it too.

“I didn’t think so.” Jaskier considers this for a moment. “So why did we?”

“The same reason I told you not to come inside without me.”

“Naturally.” Jaskier stretches, long and languorous, and there are Geralt’s fingers running up and down his chest, like he just can’t help himself, and Jaskier makes a pleased sound in the back of his throat. It’s a good thing, a lucky thing, nothing’s come to murder them in their sleep. Geralt’s swords are abandoned to the floor somewhere. It occurs to Jaskier now that he doesn’t rightly remember seeing Geralt put them down; they were already gone before that first kiss beside the bed, weren’t they? It takes him a moment to focus his way back to the afternoon, to before Geralt came inside and his mind was…clearer. “I don’t think anything much would have happened if it had only been me in here.”

“Maybe not.” Geralt nudges him over. “It’s time to go.”

“All right,” Jaskier says, amiably enough, and rolls his way out of bed, but not without pausing in the process to kiss Geralt, leisurely about it. He collects clothing as he goes, making his way toward the door. He means to poke his head out and see if anybody else is about, only—

“Geralt?”

“What is it?” Geralt is by his side in a breathspan, one hand protective on Jaskier’s arm, a sword collected from somewhere to occupy the other. It’s quite a thing to behold, as he’s still nude. He leans forward and encounters the same problem as Jaskier: a barrier of some sort. He meets the resistance with significantly more swearing.

“I don’t think we’re going anywhere yet.” Jaskier surveys the cottage interior anew. There are lanterns lit, certainly not by himself or Geralt, and they lend the space an air he’d call romantic, if they weren’t trapped in here. He might call it romantic anyway. Just not aloud. Ridiculous, this. “I never had a chance to tell you yesterday,” he says, with some amount of realization. He drops his clothes in a new heap at his feet. “I got distracted. _You_ distracted me.” He narrows his eyes, thinking how very un-Geralt behavior that was. “With kissing.”

“I remember,” Geralt says, calm edged with irritation. “What didn’t you tell me?”

Jaskier takes Geralt by the hand and pulls him along to the table, snatches up the note that’s still sitting there, and pushes it into Geralt’s hand. The sword finds its way back into the sheath and then to a place on the wall.

“There’s also all this,” he says, and opens drawers to close them again, once Geralt’s had a chance to see just what they’re stuffed full of.

Geralt’s face pinches, but it looks more than anything like he’s trying not to laugh. “I hate sex magic.”

“Sex magic,” Jaskier echoes. “You’ve been holding out on me, White Wolf. Why have you never introduced me to sex magic before?”

“Because I’m a _witcher_.”

“Right, yes, I forgot witchers have all the fun trained out of them, silly me.” Hands on his hips, Jaskier considers the place again. “So how are we meant to leave?”

Geralt replaces the note on the table and says, “I would guess with orgasms,” so perfectly reasonable about it Jaskier cannot help but laugh.

“I do like orgasms,” he says, slipping his arms around Geralt’s neck. “We did have some already. Shouldn’t we be free to go?”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to take a break in the middle.”

“So,” Jaskier says, thoughtful, like this is the sort of conversation they have every day, and really it’s no stranger than some others they’ve had of late: stars and flower ladies and ghosts and all that, his life is _something_ spent with Geralt, “more than two orgasms—apiece, do you suppose?—and no nodding off in between them. I don’t think that will be a problem, aside from my not having quite your ability to keep on…” He trails off, considering the truly astounding number of aphrodisiacs in the room. “Never mind. I don’t think we’ll have any problems at all.”

Geralt fixes him with a _look_ and Jaskier holds his hands out, the very picture of innocence, if he weren’t nude and giving a great deal of thought to an assortment of aphrodisiacal substances.

“What? I think we ought to enjoy ourselves while we’re here.” His lips tug up at the corners. “I think enjoying ourselves is the entire point of here, is it not?”

“Let’s have something to eat first,” Geralt says, in a resigned tone that clearly expects protest, but Jaskier only takes him by the hand and cups his face in the other to tilt him down for a kiss.

“Smile, you wretched man,” he says gently, against Geralt’s mouth, kissing a line up to his ear. “We might have ended up somewhere much worse. I’ll pretend it doesn’t hurt my feelings that you sound so very unenthusiastic about fucking me senseless.”

“You’re not the problem.” Geralt squeezes his hand and leans back to look at him with an intensity that makes him straighten up and listen well. “This kind of magic plays with your mind and I don’t like having my head played with. I don’t like having _your_ head played with.”

Jaskier spends a moment in lapsed consideration of this. “You’re right, but I don’t see what there is to do about it, and I love you terribly, and at least we’re here, the two of us, not anybody else. It’s fucking with our judgment, yes, obviously, but I do want you, and unless I’ve had an implausibly poor understanding of our past few months—”

“Shut up, Dandelion,” Geralt says, but there’s no heat behind it, and he’s smiling, or doing that thing he sometimes does where he pretends _not_ to be smiling. “You know you haven’t.” He draws Jaskier’s palm to his mouth for a wet kiss that doesn’t much lend itself to a dinner break, nor to Jaskier standing up, his knees going soft. “I love you.”

“There now.” His voice quivers. Geralt is holding him up now, on account of the funny business with his knees. “We’ll trouble ourselves with the dubious practice of sex magic later, and allow ourselves some fun for now, yes?”

After only a moment or two, Geralt says, “Yes.”

“Good.” Jaskier smiles broadly at him. “Now, do you need me to spell fun for you again? It’s—”

“Shut up,” Geralt says again, and kisses him while he laughs.

Once his knees are working again, Jaskier slips away and distracts himself with the contents of the larder. It _is_ well-stocked, everything fresh as far as his nose can best tell, and while he’s never been a particularly talented cook, he has learned to fix a meal while on the road, so he’s sure he can figure out the oven here—but apparently he needn’t bother. He makes it as far as selecting a skinned hare and the choicest vegetables, and the oven has lit itself and there’s a knife seeing to a turnip.

“Geralt, darling, how do you feel about domestic chore magic?” he says to the man who’s been pacing behind him like an irritated, pent-up stallion. “It looks like the house would rather do the cooking on our behalf.”

“That’s for the best.”

“How dare you.” Jaskier sets his hands on his hips in mock outrage. “I’m never doing the cooking again.”

“Small mercies,” Geralt says, and Jaskier tosses a handful of conveniently-located berries at him. They’re deflected easily, because Geralt cannot simply let him win, the unreasonable thing. Then he’s being waved forward with a, “Come here.”

It doesn’t feel like anything out of the ordinary, naked and pressed flush against an equally naked Geralt, and Jaskier is hard-pressed to be so bothered by this magic, at least on his own behalf. This could be any old day, in any old well-kept cabin, nicer than they tend to find along the road; but it’s second nature, at this point, kissing Geralt and being kissed back. He pulls away to skim his mouth along Geralt’s jaw, then lower, until he’s touching kisses all over Geralt’s utterly entrancing collarbones.

“As long as dinner’s being made,” he says, giving Geralt a lopsided smile before sinking to his knees, “maybe I’ll try something else from the menu.”

Geralt groans, not in the ‘my lover is on his knees and the sight of that makes my cock so hard it might fall off, which would be unfortunate actually, this is a terrible metaphor let’s pretend it never happened—the sight of that is just astonishingly arousing’ sort of way, but in the ‘I can’t believe those words just left your mouth’ sort of way. Then Jaskier is trailing his kisses up Geralt’s cock, and that does change the tone of the thing. Jaskier takes a great deal of pleasure in lavishing attention on Geralt’s prick, has always enjoyed the act as much as any other physical engagement, but when it’s with Geralt it’s even better, because Geralt is so obviously unused to this sort of thing. Not having his cock sucked, in a general sense, but the way Jaskier handles him, dedicating his full attention with hands and mouth. His fingers play lower than his lips and tongue, whispering over Geralt’s balls and then back, up the crease of his ass.

Geralt gets a hand into his hair, and one onto his face, so for a moment there’s a thumb hooked into his mouth, and he moans around the entire mouthful, meeting Geralt’s half-shut eyes, briefly, before returning his full attention to the task at hand (or task at mouth): that is, making Geralt come down his throat.

It isn’t long before he’s swallowing, then pulling off, wiping his mouth with the back of a one hand, and Geralt hauls him up for a rough kiss.

“I’m jealous of every other man who’s ever had your mouth on them,” Geralt says, and Jaskier laughs, loud and delighted.

“You shouldn’t be, leastwise the early ones, as I’m sure they’d tell you.”

“Is that you admitting you weren’t a natural?”

Jaskier grins at him. “Had to work on my gag reflex. Took lots of practice.”

Geralt growls and shoves him back onto the bed.

Much to Jaskier’s surprise and chagrin (one of them more than the other to be sure, only he hasn’t decided which just yet), Geralt does _not_ fall on him immediately. He turns away, to rifle through the selection of…hm, all right, that’s not so objectionable. The fact that Geralt is picking over aphrodisiacs and Jaskier has a fantastic view of that well-muscled backside—he decides to come down on the side of more surprise, less chagrin.

The dinner finishes making itself before Geralt makes a choice, which is disappointing and also not. “We should eat,” Geralt says, all low and irresistible, “for stamina,” and he shouldn’t be allowed to sound like sex when he’s suggesting they put off having sex. But it is nice, sitting in bed together, naked and eating; it’s the intimacy Jaskier likes. Prior to this consuming, inflaming thing with Geralt, Jaskier was prone to one night affairs, a handful of nights with one partner at the most—the nights, that is, multiple partners were ever-welcome—not long kisses for the sake of kissing, or fingers running down his back just to be touching him.

Actually.

Some of that, he did already have. With Geralt. Only he’d failed to recognize it for what it was. “I really ought to kick myself,” he muses over his wine. Geralt gives him a curious look, and he shrugs. “Have you finished? I was hoping, you know,” one hand wanders between Geralt’s legs, to his half-hard prick, and gives it a firm stroke, the answering parting of Geralt’s lips altogether satisfying, “that you might fuck me. Possibly more than once.” He considers the room. “Possibly on that table. If you’re amenable.”

Geralt is on him in a moment, plate discarded to who knows where. It’s difficult to care about the wine spilled onto his stomach and beyond with Geralt snatching the glass from his fingers to set it aside and then there’s his mouth, his tongue cleaning up the mess. Jaskier wonders who does the laundry here, but doesn’t bother to think an apology for the wine. If they didn’t want wine on the bed they shouldn’t have stocked their sex magic cabin with wine at all, obviously.

His fingers dig into Geralt’s shoulders, that tongue having found its way to Jaskier’s cock. “Tell me what you want,” he says, not properly taking Jaskier in his mouth, only teasing at the idea, his tongue tracing along Jaskier’s balls, and Jaskier makes a sound embarrassingly near a whine.

“I just said I want you to—fuck, but anything,” he says. “I want anything as long as you’re touching me.”

And then, because Geralt is an absolute bastard, he stops touching altogether, which in Jaskier’s opinion, “Goes against the entire point of the exercise here,” but saying so doesn’t stop Geralt from rising back to his feet and taking a step back, and being looked at like that—

Gooseflesh raises itself all along Jaskier’s arms, and his cock twitches, and that smile so does belong to a wolf more than a man, and Geralt must notice his reactions, can probably smell a few more Jaskier himself isn’t altogether conscious of, because that smile stretches wider, and Jaskier might hate him if he didn’t love him so damned impossibly much.

Loving him, however, doesn’t stop him cursing Geralt’s name and then pointing out that, “We’re not going to be able to leave if you don’t touch me.” Geralt laughs, low and sensual and Jaskier’s body is an absolute traitor, the way it responds; then again, it’s gotten used to responding to Geralt. He changes tack. “You’re going to hurt my feelings if you don’t touch me.”

“Come here then.” Geralt beckons him, and Jaskier, feeling only somewhat put upon, shimmies his way closer, or sashays, or slinks; the point is, he’s trying to be sexy about it, so his hips are swaying and his lips are set in a pout, right up until Geralt’s hand closes on his wrist and Geralt reels him in, and that certainly is Geralt’s cock, and Geralt’s other arm wrapped around his middle, and Geralt’s mouth below his ear, and there’s going to be a mark on his skin for days after this. Several marks, if he gets his way, which might also be the cabin’s way, but he’s not overly concerned about that. If all this magic means to do is make him fuck his way vigorously through a night with his lover, he’ll do so with the greatest of enthusiasm. He’d do so _without_ the cabin’s encouragement. Now he thinks of it, he’s less pleased with the earlier clouding of his thoughts.

But it’s like he said to Geralt: for now, they’ll have some fun.

The next sound he makes breaks halfway through, shakes out of him, and Geralt licks at the mark he’s sucked and bitten into Jaskier’s throat. Then he brings Jaskier in front of him, chest to back, his hand between Jaskier’s legs to pull at his cock a few times, and he indicates the aphrodisiacs left here for their use. “Which of these are the most potent, Dandelion?”

“That,” Jaskier says, something of an expert on the matter, “would be this.”

He indicates a small glass bottle filled with an amber liquid. The label indicates a substance that he’s—well, got no experience with at all, to be perfectly honest. Not for lack of trying. It’s a rare sort of thing, not easily found in the places he frequents. Possibly he could have asked Yennefer for it at some point, but the idea of asking the witch for anything pertaining to his cock…thank you, but no fucking thank you. Especially when their paths crossing usually meant she was going to bed with Geralt. (He might have been more jealous than he realized at the time. But he’s over it. Really, he is. He’s had more sex with Geralt in the last six months than she had in six years. He’s _completely_ over it.)

In the moment, he’s glad he’s never had the opportunity to use it himself before now. There’s a toe-curling delight in knowing he’ll be using it for the first time with Geralt, his Geralt, who sometimes looks at him like he hung the moon and scattered all the stars that Jaskier himself is…related to by blood or marriage now? His growing kinship with the stars is the least of his concerns at the moment.

“It’s meant to be very potent.” Jaskier picks up the bottle and gives it a bit of a shake. It’s not a thick liquid, and it looks glittery, flecked with gold. From what he’s heard, it’s meant to be that way. He uncorks the bottle and brings it to his nose; it hasn’t got a smell that he can name, but breathing in makes him full-body shiver, makes his cock jump. He splashes a little into two glasses, hands one of them to Geralt, and says, “A toast to fucking until we can’t move?”

Geralt snorts. They down their drinks at the same time, and Jaskier cannot speak for Geralt, but for his own part he is flooded with heat from the crest of his head all the way down into his toes. There are certain substances he knows of (and some of them are among the cabin’s offerings) that dull the mind, make everything sort of…dreamlike and faraway. This is not one of them. No, this particular aphrodisiac, made from a careful dilution of herbs and such, only increases the appetite, so to speak. Gives the body some additional energy to keep going when a cock would usually be declaring itself finished for a while.

Jaskier bounces a little on his feet, waiting for Geralt to set his glass down. As soon as he has, Jaskier, hm, climbs him like a tree. Clings like an octopus. One of those, certainly. The kiss feels sharper, like there’s been a wash of clarity along all his senses, and he can feel every place they’re touching at once. His hands in Geralt’s hair and digging into his back, Geralt’s hands curled over his ass, Geralt’s hot, hot mouth, their cocks pressing together. He can smell the sweat on Geralt’s skin.

“I can’t decide what I want first,” Jaskier says, his eyes flicking between Geralt and the bed and the cabin’s options, which aren’t things they usually have to hand. “Anything capturing your imagination, darling wolf?”

“You always do,” Geralt says, and Jaskier’s breath catches; it’s not often he gets anything half so romantic out of Geralt, who to hear him tell it, doesn’t know _how_ to be romantic, which is of course a crock of shit. He kisses him again, long and sweet, then turns his attention back to the spread. There’s really no _need_ for anything but oil, but as long as all of this is here for their pleasure, he sees no reason not to take advantage.

He settles, after careful consideration, on a bowl of sweet cream, and urges Geralt onto the bed with his back against the backboard. Here he settles on his knees between Geralt’s legs, the bowl set to the side, and swipes one finger through the cream. Eyes agleam, he sucks that finger into his own mouth and makes a happy little sound around it. The cream is perfectly sweet, with a hint of strawberries and honey chasing underneath the taste.

“This is very good,” he says conversationally, already dipping two fingers back into the bowl and then dancing them along Geralt’s collar. He leans in to drag his tongue along the lines he’s left, slow and deliberate about it, with unnecessary sounds. “I like the taste of you as much as anything sweet, you know.”

The next streak goes to his own throat, and he gives Geralt his prettiest smile. “Would you like to try some, darling wolf?”

Geralt’s expression is alarmingly close to feral. Except it isn’t alarming at all, because it’s _Geralt_ and he’s about as threatening to Jaskier as a basket full of kittens, and more likely to apologize if he does cause any harm. He surges forward without a word, fully tumbling Jaskier onto his back, and Jaskier is laughing right up until Geralt’s mouth is on his skin, at which point the laughter rather gives way to something else. There’s a hand playing with his balls, rolling them and stroking sensitive skin, and he whines, his cock fully hard again, and then that hand is gone from between his legs.

He’s also pretty sure the bowl of cream is on the floor now.

Any thoughts of complaining flee his mind when Geralt’s mouth slots against his. He likes having Geralt on top of him. Likes the way it makes him feel surrounded and protected and cared for, caging him in while he’s kissed within an inch of his life, kissed breathless and it’s so sweet, so perfectly Geralt, and Jaskier likes, as well, that he’s the only person who sees this side of the witcher. As much as he wishes people, as a whole sorry lot, would recognize that Geralt isn’t some evil thing come to bring the dark parts of the world along in his saddlebags, _this_ is just for him.

They kiss that way for a long time, Jaskier’s hands all over Geralt’s back; he would be content to spend the whole night like this, ignoring his leaking prick, but his skin’s all-over hot from the drink, and he lifts his hips, seeking attention. One hand drifts its way to Geralt’s ass. “I had more plans for that cream,” he murmurs into the kiss, “but someone’s gone and made a mess. However will you make it up to me?”

Geralt’s eyes are practically golden in the light, the most beautiful things Jaskier has ever seen, and they do not look away from each other when two fingers slide between Jaskier’s lips. He sucks at them eagerly, till they’re coated in saliva, and he spreads his legs a little, and his breath hitches, his eyes fluttering shut.

“Yes,” he breathes, shifting to get—just—his hips roll once, for more, before Geralt’s mouth comes to his ear and tugs.

“Stay still,” Geralt says. “This is for me.”

Jaskier makes a sound equal parts frustration and pleasure-weak acquiescence. His witcher, his wolf, is an excellent study, and he’s learned Jaskier well, just the way to massage at his sweet spot, to bring him near the edge and then pull him back, and his mouth is hot and wet and everywhere: Jaskier’s shoulders, his jaw, his collarbones, his neck. Not moving is going to be the end of him.

When Geralt’s thick fingers leave him altogether, he opens both eyes and mouth to protest, but Geralt hushes him, and Geralt is retrieving the oil, pouring it onto his palm and smoothing it over his own cock, hanging heavy between his legs. He doesn’t keep Jaskier waiting, pushing into him in a steady, all-at-once thrust, and Jaskier takes that scarred-perfect face in both hands for another kiss, one that seems to burn and ache and sing in him.

Geralt takes him slowly, without ever breaking the kiss. A hand runs along the back of his leg and urges him to lift, and yes, yes, he wants that, lets Geralt arrange him with that leg over the man’s shoulder. The other hand drifts between his inner thigh and Jaskier’s cock, a blissful torment. It’s never quite _enough_ , the pleasure building slowly, so very slowly. He loves it when Geralt fucks him hard, like he’s irresistible and Geralt cannot wait to take him apart, and he loves it when it’s like this, every thrust and shift carefully controlled and measured to make him gasp and shudder in Geralt’s hands. He never had much care for mathematics in his Oxenfurt days, but as long as the equation involves himself and Geralt, he’s happy no matter the other…factors? Components? His mathematics metaphor falls somewhat apart here, but that matters little with Geralt filling him, kissing him like the most precious treasure in the world.

The orgasm washes over him like an ocean wave, and he does not want the moment to end. He clutches Geralt fractionally closer, because fractionally’s all there is, and when Geralt follows him over that edge he makes an almost grateful sound into Jaskier’s mouth.

They stay like that for a minute, then separate stickily, Geralt easing Jaskier’s leg down and molding his hand around the shape of the same knee. It’s a pleasant position, and Jaskier would be content to stay just like this, would that their situation allowed for it.

“I need a moment,” he says, running his hand down Geralt’s sweat-slicked back, his mouth on Geralt’s skin. “How long d’you think we’re allowed to have in between?”

“A while, if we don’t fall asleep,” Geralt guesses. He comes down all the way onto Jaskier’s chest, the full weight of him, and combs one hand through Jaskier’s hair. “From what I’ve learned, as long as we’re still…active, I think the magic will work itself out.”

“Good thing.” Jaskier continues to rub Geralt’s back, his cock still hard, and he’s very aware of Geralt’s against his thigh. “Hand me the wine?”

Geralt does, and he takes a long drink before giving the bottle back. He manages to push himself so his back is to the headboard, and gives Geralt an appreciative look. “Hand me the oil now?”

Geralt does that, too, and Jaskier pulls his witcher in by the hair, grinning at the growl it earns him. They settle with Geralt’s knees to either side of his hips, Jaskier’s hand trailing a little at a time from its place in Geralt’s hair until it’s between those exceptional thighs, where he can flick his thumb over the head of Geralt’s cock.

“I was thinking you might like me to fuck you again,” he says casually, wrapping his hand properly around Geralt’s cock to stroke him, and Geralt’s eyes go darker yet at that, and his voice is almost entirely a growl on, “Yes.”

Jaskier doesn’t stop himself from grinning, the bright expression occupying his entire face while he pours a generous amount of oil onto his fingers and slips that hand beneath. They haven’t done it this way since their night in Wyrasta, and they haven’t done it _exactly_ this way at all, and, “It’s only fair,” he says, sliding two fingers neatly into Geralt, confident he can take that much to start, “as many times as I’ve been on your cock, that I get to know what it looks like the other way around.”

The way Geralt’s legs go wider at that is a sight to behold. Even better is the sound he makes when Jaskier’s eagerly exploring fingers find their way to stroking his sweet spot, his other hand still on Geralt’s cock; maybe he could get Geralt off this way, but that’s not happening just now, because he’s not gotten as far as a third finger when Geralt tells him, “Enough,” and then— _oh_ , fuck—Jaskier makes a sound that could be embarrassing, in other circumstances.

No call for embarrassment here, with Geralt sinking down onto his cock, not even taking his time with it, just _down down down_ until Jaskier is in him to the root. His skin feels hotter than before, and he usually doesn’t have any trouble deciding what to do with his hands, but he’d like to have them everywhere just now, and the result is that they flutter uselessly about the air, his mouth hanging open on a drawn-out moan.

Geralt, apparently, knows _just_ what to do with his hands. Both of those rough palms come to rest on Jaskier’s chest, and then his mouth covers Jaskier’s to swallow whatever sounds he makes from there (rather a lot of them), and _fuck_ , fuck, that’s good, he hadn’t known he could appreciate Geralt’s thighs more than he already did. His own hands, in the end, go to Geralt’s legs, fingers digging in hard.

The slap of skin on skin fills the room.

“Fuck,” Jaskier says aloud when Geralt’s mouth leaves his. The image of Geralt fucking himself on his cock is one he’d like to sear into his memory, down to the last details of beaded sweat trickling down his chest. And then there’s the way he feels, tight and hot and Jaskier is going to come again, he realizes with a certainty, just before the orgasm rolls through him.

Geralt only slows down a little while Jaskier is coming, and Jaskier makes a helpless sound, and then he’s right back to working those powerful hips. Jaskier feels dizzied with surfeits of pleasure and lust. He gets his hands onto Geralt’s hips, and his cock’s not softened at all (thank you very much to that heady amber liquid) and he matches Geralt’s pace. Jaskier loves being fucked, really he does, but this is every inch as good, the look on Geralt’s face, the sounds that are falling out of him, the way he tips forward and moves all the more urgently, and Jaskier says, “There you are, my wolf, come on, I want to feel it.”

And feel it he _does_ and it’s just as toe-curlingly delicious as he might have expected. Geralt clenches around him, and there’s a coat of seed on Jaskier’s chest, and their mouth crush together again. It’s a hard, eager kiss, altogether sloppy, one of Geralt’s hands holding Jaskier’s chin almost too tight, and he loves this, loves Geralt letting himself go, losing that careful control with him, and they’re still kissing when Geralt lifts off of him.

There’s a new sensitivity to Jaskier’s cock when the back of Geralt’s fingers draw across him, and his breath stutters. He doesn’t feel _finished_ , not yet, but thinks maybe he could use something of a break. Well. In a manner of speaking. He tugs at Geralt’s hair and suggests, “Would you like to try something new, darling?”

Geralt’s pupils are blown, and there’s a moment (just a short one) where Jaskier wishes he’d taken up painting, because that’s a look he’d like to immortalize. The next best thing, he supposes, is making it continue. “What kind of new?”

“I suppose you might have done it before,” Jaskier muses, “but you hadn’t been fucked before me, so I’m hoping otherwise. I’d like to have another first.”

“Greedy, aren’t you?” Geralt says, his mouth on Jaskier’s throat now, sucking and biting another mark into place. Jaskier’s neck is going to be quite a sight after all this. It’s the little things in life.

“Mm,” Jaskier agrees, the hand still on Geralt’s hip sliding lower to squeeze his ass. His fingers push on toward Geralt’s entrance, where he can feel the slickness of his own seed, and his cock twitches when Geralt makes a sound both moan and growl into his throat. “There are lots of—oh, that’s nice, do that again—toys here. I thought putting one inside you could be heaps of fun.”

There’s that moaning growl or growled moan again, and Jaskier says, “I thought so. You will have to let me up, I’m afraid.”

Geralt takes his time before letting Jaskier out of bed, making good use of teeth and tongue, until Jaskier is well beyond whimpering. His legs forget their job for a moment when he stumbles out of bed, and he’s got to wipe wine from his chin after an unsteady few tugs from the bottle.

The spread of toys is as impressively varied as it was earlier (or yesterday, he’s not entirely sure of the time) and Jaskier gives careful consideration to his options. It’s got to be a dildo, but that decision alone does little to narrow his options. “This _is_ going to be your first time with one of these, yes?” he tosses over his shoulder.

“Yes, Dandelion,” Geralt says, in a tone that would be long-suffering if it weren’t highly aroused and also amused.

Right then. That helps. Nothing _too_ big, then. He lands, eventually, on a silver thing, about the length of his own cock and the width of perhaps three fingers, a little more girth than that; he’s not sure of the material, hasn’t felt anything quite like it before, but it’s nothing that will be rough, he’s confident of that much.

He turns to return to the bed and has to take a moment to appreciate the sight of Geralt rolled onto his back, one hand slowly working his cock, the other one beckoning Jaskier forward now. He crawls between Geralt’s legs and shows him his toy of choice. “To your liking, Geralt?”

Geralt answers by handing him the oil again. Jaskier isn’t certain it’ll be needed, not with Geralt loose and slick from a few minutes ago, but he takes it, and settles himself on his stomach, pushing Geralt’s legs wide apart. The view from here is excellent and obscene (two things that often go together, in Jaskier’s experience) and makes his own cock ache.

He begins with something he’s done for Geralt only a few times so far (not for lack of willingness), his mouth going to Geralt’s balls, sucking one and then the other into his mouth, and then working his way lower. His tongue flicks over Geralt’s entrance. They haven’t done it quite like this, with Geralt full of Jaskier’s come, but the filthiness of the act only makes it better, as far as Jaskier’s concerned. He can feel Geralt’s eyes on him as he pushes his tongue properly inside and sucks a little, moaning as he does, and Geralt makes a sound that’s entirely desperation.

Jaskier pulls back, licks into him one more time, and then brings the toy up to play. Only the first inch, and he murmurs, “How’s that?” with his fingers playing along Geralt’s rim. “Tell me how that feels, White Wolf.”

“It feels like you should use it properly,” Geralt says through clenched teeth, and Jaskier laughs at him.

“All in good time,” he chides, taking it out altogether and replacing it with his tongue. ‘All in good time’ turns out to be not much time at all though, because Jaskier is a bit weak where Geralt is concerned (a lot weak, as it were) and he _is_ greedy, wants to wring every gorgeous sound from him that he possibly can. Soon enough he’s pushing the silver toy as deep as it will go, giving it to Geralt hard for a few thrusts and then replacing it with his mouth.

It’s fantastic, watching Geralt’s body take every inch of the toy like it can’t get enough, and Jaskier is relentless in fucking him with it, equally so with his tongue, like he’s trying to suck Geralt clean. Every so often he’ll kiss along Geralt’s cock, his balls, suck the tip into his mouth and make good use of his tongue before returning to his hole and licking in alongside the toy.

“I want to see you suck one of these,” he says at one point, feeling drunk not on the wine but on Geralt, on the way those hands clench in the bed and the way he thrashes and the way his hips jerk, seeking more, and the way he says Jaskier’s name, alternating between ‘Jaskier’ and ‘Dandelion’ as much as he alternates between his mouth and the dildo. Geralt’s third (is it third? Jaskier has rather lost count) orgasm is a long time coming (his lips twitch at his own private joke). Jaskier rolls Geralt’s balls in his hand this time, appreciating the weight of them as much as the sight of Geralt’s cock letting go again.

Jaskier slides the toy free with a thoughtful, “I think we’re going to take this with us,” and Geralt rumbles approval from deep in his chest. He sounds entirely satisfied with himself on, “I knew you’d like that.”

Geralt hauls him up, cocks sliding together and the twin stickiness of more sweat and come making Jaskier shiver. “I’ll like anything you want to do to me,” he says, which has much the effect on Jaskier of a significant number of drinks and also all his bones being removed at once; that is to say, he goes terribly weak and lets himself be kissed for an awfully long time. Or it _could_ be thirty seconds. Either way, he’s got his hands flat on Geralt’s chest and both of Geralt’s hands fitted around the curve of his ass, and when they part it’s for Geralt to suck at his bottom lip and then give him a starved wolf look. “What do you want me to do to you?”

“Anything you like,” Jaskier says with a suggestive little wriggling of his hips. Geralt’s grip on him goes tighter, spreading him, which is very, very, good, brilliant man, this one. “I’ve told you how much I like your hands, haven’t I?”

“More than once.” There’s one fingertip teasing at his entrance, and yes, _yes,_ that’s just what he wants.

“Can’t possibly tell you enough. Geralt, darling, do you recall back in Oxenfurt when we talked about the possibility of more than three fingers? We still haven’t done that.”

Geralt growls and flips them over so that he’s back on top. It takes a moment to relocate the oil, and Jaskier gives the bottle a fascinated look while Geralt’s dumping it over his hand, the excess dripping off onto Jaskier’s stomach. “I don’t think that’s gotten any emptier. Do you think it works that way if we take it with us?”

“We can find out,” Geralt says, and pulls one leg over his arm to expose Jaskier’s ass, and Jaskier lifts his hips a little, as if Geralt might need the encouragement.

Then Geralt’s fingers press inside him again and he squirms, just two of them, but Geralt presses them in deep and there, _there_ , like that, “ _Oh_ ,” he breathes, “oh, yes, yes, just like that, give me another,” and Geralt, always happy to please him, does as asked. There’s no sting, not after the evening they’ve had here, not with Jaskier so readied to take him, it’s only good, only pleasure all the way down to his toes, and Geralt’s mouth on his jaw, his neck, his collarbones.

The tip of Geralt’s little finger (though calling it little hardly seems suitable, the size of Geralt’s hands) brushes his rim, and he says, “Yes,” again, and Geralt sits up some to meet his eyes. “You look _awfully_ pensive for a man with three fingers in my ass.”

“Are you sure about this?” Geralt says, his mouth not so much as twitching at the words.

Jaskier considers him, and the effort of lifting his arm to curl fingers around Geralt’s neck and pull them together, and decides the effort is worthwhile for all the reassurance Geralt needs. “I’m sure,” he says between kisses. “If it’s too much I’ll tell you, but if I can handle your cock I’m sure I can manage four of your fingers.”

Geralt makes a sound that would be a growl, except it’s too soft to qualify, and it makes Jaskier shudder with pleasure. He brings their mouths together again, his tongue against Geralt’s while that fourth finger begins the push into him. There is some burn, some sting with that additional nudging inside, but between the oil and the come-slickness and the fucking they’ve already done, Jaskier’s body offers little resistance and even less protest. The sound that falls out of him is breathy and needy and his hand slides fully up into Geralt’s hair for his fingers to tighten there, and it’s all he can do to keep his hips still, to give Geralt whatever time _he_ needs.

But he does say, “Geralt,” because he wants Geralt to hear it, and he says, “That’s good, fuck, I love you,” and then Geralt’s fingers begin to work. It’s less of a thrusting motion than usual, more stroking, more stretching, and Jaskier’s hands spasm a little, his eyes fallen closed, but he forces them back open so he can have a proper look at Geralt and make sure this is working for _him_. He finds Geralt’s gaze locked to the place where his fingers are fitted inside, like he can’t believe he’s doing this to Jaskier.

Jaskier throws his head back and shouts when he comes, and this time his whole body is left twitching and trembling, and Geralt is so very careful about pulling his fingers free, and Jaskier is making soft like _hn_ sounds all the while. He doesn’t have to ask for the wine this time, Geralt just tips it down his throat before laying down beside him and saying, “Talk to me, Jaskier.”

“I am thankful every day that I chose to sit down and talk to the brooding storm cloud in the corner of the tavern,” Jaskier says, his eyes closed again, “and also I can’t feel my toes, d’you think that’s normal?” Geralt takes one of his hands and kisses his knuckles, and Jaskier feels perfectly content. “Think it’s finished yet? How are we meant to know?”

“We try to leave.” Geralt is still holding his hand like something delicate, the way he so often does, and Jaskier’s chest aches.

“I suppose we try to leave without having another nap?”

“Unless you want to do this again.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he says, nudging Geralt onto his back so he can better trace scars and appreciate chest hair. “I think I like sex magic.”

“You would.”

“And whatever do you mean by that?” Jaskier nudges Geralt with his toes.

“Insatiable bard.”

“False. I’m currently perfectly satiated. I might have one more in me, if we think we need it.”

Geralt, sadly, extricates himself from the warm and sticky bed, and makes his way to the door. He opens it and cautiously reaches a hand through. Nothing stops him. Jaskier takes the cue to get up, though he’s dramatic about it, and says, “I suppose the horses will start to wonder if we hang around too long.”

The cleanup is easy. Very prepared, whoever arranged this place. Jaskier opens up the windows, and squirms his way back into his clothes, torn shirt and all, before sitting down to manage his boots. Geralt, only partway dressed, which is perfectly fine with Jaskier, is looking (complete with sniffing) around the cabin, touching all sorts of things, and Jaskier says, “Are you looking for something?”

“A way to undo the magic.” Geralt’s frown lines are enjoying prominence. “I don’t see anything. Do you?”

Jaskier casts a look about, still wholly unsure how his own whatever-it-is works, and shakes his head. “Maybe,” he says with a suggestive waggling of eyebrows, “if we stick around long enough, give it another go or three…?”

Geralt snorts.

“I mean it. We could vacation here.”

Geralt is on him in a moment, pulling Jaskier up from the bed and tight against his chest, and the kiss is—the kiss is perfect, and when it’s finished Geralt cradles his chin in one hand and says, “We don’t need sex magic for me to want you every minute of every day.”

“What a sweet talker you are.” Jaskier goes up for another kiss, chasing it with a secretive little smile that could double as a wink. “But as long as we’re here? I’m just going to take a few things.”

This time Geralt laughs properly, his smile all fondness that still warms Jaskier from head to toe, and once he’s finished wrestling his second boot on, he proceeds to raid the drawers. Surely the sex magic can make more aphrodisiacs and toys, or the person responsible can, and Jaskier can put these to good use when they’re on the road. He finds a satchel to stuff full that wasn’t there before, and he doesn’t mind the cabin being helpful at this juncture.

“What are you taking?” Geralt asks from over his shoulder.

Jaskier holds the satchel closed. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

Stepping outside feels like—and is, in a literal sense—a breath of fresh air. Despite the cleanup, the cottage still smelled powerfully of sex.

“So,” he says while Geralt is readying Roach and Compass, who they’ve found dozing, unconcerned by their absence, “what do you suppose this is? A succubus’ idea of a joke?”

“Probably something like that.” Geralt checks Roach’s girth and gives her withers a pat.

“And—just out of curiosity—how do you think this all works for people who aren’t already—”

“That’s the problem with sex magic.” Geralt’s shoulders are stiff. “It doesn’t always care if its victims like each other.”

“Oh.” Jaskier hesitates. “Have you ever fallen under its sway before, then?”

“No.” Geralt shakes his head, and Jaskier feels relieved at once. “Not me. Eskel.”

Something of a mood-ruiner, that. Jaskier is quiet all the way back to the town. It’s late, or early, he’s still not sure, and the innkeeper is less than pleased to be dragged out of bed at this hour in either case, but Geralt’s coin changes his tune right quick. Jaskier falls asleep easily, Geralt’s arms wrapped around him.

Morning—actual morning, the part of it where people are up and about—comes much too soon, and Jaskier finds Geralt already sitting up and putting his boots on. “Were you going to wake me?” he says through a yawn. “Are we going somewhere?”

“I realized,” Geralt says, evidently choosing to ignore his first question, “there was a familiar smell. The apothecary.”

Jaskier makes a sound best interpreted as _all right that_ _’s wonderful but it’s still too early for this please let’s go back to sleep_ and yet he drags himself out of bed and splashes water on his face so he might look halfway awake for this trip. If they’re going to speak with the person responsible for that cabin, he absolutely must be there.

The apothecary is open, attended by a woman in a deeply purple dress, her hair done up in some elegant style that would undoubtedly make all the noblewomen across the continent jealous. Jaskier recalls their encounter with her yesterday, and the acerbic smile today is just the same as before.

“Back so soon?” she says, her voice pleasing to the ear.

“We’re here to have a word about your cabin,” Geralt says, and the woman’s eyes turn guarded. There’s the sound of the door bolting itself.

“I for one thought it was great fun,” Jaskier volunteers, and the smile becomes somewhat less acerbic and more amused, “but my witcher here has some concerns about the, how should I say this, consent aspect?”

The woman, who now that Jaskier is really looking at her, seems less human than before, laughs. Her beauty is a little too sharp, a little too perfect. Succubus was probably right on the mark, but it seems rude to ask a person’s species when you hardly know them. Her laughter is as sharp as the rest of her; he’s reminded of Yennefer.

“I don’t see what’s funny.” Geralt isn’t reaching for his sword, which is a good sign. It’s so early for bloodshed.

“Witchers so rarely do.” The woman leans forward, and Jaskier can’t help if his eyes are drawn to her bosom when it’s so prominently displayed; a lovely bosom it is, too. “The people here are horribly repressed, Geralt of Rivia. I’m only trying to help. My magic won’t influence anybody who isn’t interested in the person they’re with, though most of them don’t care to admit it. I think they’re embarrassed. Though not my Jayna.”

It takes Jaskier a moment to place the name; he’s almost certain that’s the barmaid they spoke to yesterday.

“So,” the woman who is almost definitely a succubus goes on, “you needn’t worry about consent. Based on the color of your hair I’d say you’ve done more than enough worrying in your life.”

“He has, at that,” Jaskier says, and the woman gives him an appreciative, knowing smile.

“You had a nice time then?”

“Absolutely.” Jaskier grins back at her, and tries not to laugh at the stoicism on Geralt’s face, especially as the woman gives the witcher a lingering once-over. “Also, I hope you don’t mind, I’ve taken some of your things.”

“As long as you’re going to put them to good use,” she says, and he assures her there will be _very_ good use, and he thinks if she didn’t unlatch the door again Geralt would tear it off its hinges on his way out.

“I can find him later,” Jaskier says, unconcerned, and really, if Geralt didn’t want him to spend his morning gossiping with a succubus, he shouldn’t have left him here with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I plan to add one more chapter to this in about 6 weeks and then take a break from it to work on another Witcher fic I've been putting off! (But I'll come back to this later. There's more I want to do here.)


End file.
